greygirlbeast | Entries tagged with palaeozoic museum

I had it in my mind that today might be a day off. I don't actually have the time to take a day off right now, but I'm exhausted and meant to do it anyway. I was going to go to Boston, to the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard, or to New Haven, to the Yale Peabody Museum. But, no. Rain and gale force winds. So, I'm going to do some work, and maybe go out this evening to procure more warm clothes. I'm now planning a day off for the day after Sirenia Digest #36 is sent out to subscribers, come hell or high water (or snow).

Yesterday, I wrote 759 words and found THE END of "The Colliers' Venus (1893)." So, that's nine days and forty-seven typescript pages and 9,991 words. The longest story I've written in a while, and also an odd one for me. It strays dreadfully near an actual "happy ending," with actual resolution. Okay, maybe not a happy ending, but a much less bleak than usual for me ending. And maybe not genuine resolution, but something in the same neighborhood. I'm also toying with changing the title to "Ancient of Days (1893)," but I probably won't. Also, yesterday we read through Chapter Seven of The Red Tree. I think that I have finally written a book that fascinates me. Oh, I love Daughter of Hounds, and all the others have their good points, but I'm not sure they ever fascinated me. I was passionate for each and every one, yes, but I feel as though I could stare at The Red Tree for days and days and never see the bottom.

So, instead of a day off, today I will likely be finishing the first read through on The Red Tree (just two chapters to go) and polishing "The Colliers' Venus (1893)." And, as I said, maybe going out for more sweaters and socks.

Last night is sort of a blur. I couldn't stay awake, until I tried to fall asleep. I managed some work on the

crk_blog_vault project.

Mostly, I'm toying with the idea of turning back to some of my shelved paleontology work to occupy my mind and get me away from time sucks like SL and WoW. I've got a whole fauna from the Bluffport Marl (Demopolis Chalk) of Sumter County, Alabama waiting to be prepared and described (including a large marine turtle and the youngest Cretaceous bird from Alabama). I think I've spent too much of my life, the last year and a half, living only virtually. I'm weary of it all, all those cartoon avatars. All the morons who can't be bothered, because they never learned to be earnest and, you know, it's not cool to take shit like this seriously. All the wasted potential. The simulacra that were only chat rooms. Maybe it's time for me to turn back to the "Real World." Oh, and books. And RL friends. And exercise. And sleep.

I'm not at all sure I'm making sense.

Of course, even as I say these things, I may be buying back the Palaeozoic Museum in New Babbage (SL). I sold it a few months ago, during the Howard's End debacle, but the woman who purchased it has defaulted on her rent. The mayor's offering to sell it back to me, and Spooky and I put so much work into it, I hate to just see it torn down. There's so little of old New Babbage left (it's a steampunk sim).

Also, I will cautiously say that I might be sort of tentatively impressed with Facebook. It's like MySpace for actual grown ups. People even use their actual names. That's sort of amazing.

Okay. The platypus says to drink my coffee and hop to it. So, I hop.

Current Mood: blah
Current Location: Daedalia Planum
Current Music: Poe, "Wild"

Yesterday, I wrote 822 words on "Some Notes on an Unfinished Film," which is becoming quite interesting. But now I have to set it aside and go back to work on The Red Tree. The story will still be there later this month. I might have time to finish it for Sirenia Digest #34, maybe. If not, it will likely show up in the October issue. Vince and I have agreed to do something very different this month. Usually, I write a story or vignette and send it to him to illustrate. This month, however, he's going to do a drawing, and then send it to me, at which point I'll write a story based in it. Look for the result of this experiment in Sirenia Digest #34, later this month.

Sorry, no pretty photos of the seashore today. Today, all you get is me.

I forgot to mention that Not One of Us will be reprinting "Flotsam" in an upcoming issue. October, I think.

Last night, Spooky sold the Palaeozoic Museum in New Babbage (SL) for me. It has left a weird, sad feeling. On the one hand, I'm glad it won't be torn down. It's been there for over a year (which is probably ten years in SL time), and one of the things that New Babbage (and all of SL) suffers from is a lack of place-identity, which is aggravated by an absence of history, a paucity of sense of self and place. I am grateful to the buyer, who desires only to preserve the structure. On the other hand, well, maybe there is no other hand. I will be keeping the Abney Park laboratory in New Babbage, but most of my SL attention has to be focused now on Howards End, both the build and the roleplay.

My thanks to the people who've taken the time to comment on the latest issue of the digest, and I'm quite pleased that the reaction to "The Z Word" has been so positive, and that people seem to have enjoyed the interview with (and artwork by) Max Sauco.

Not much else to say about yesterday, really. Spooky made corn on the cob and beef stroganoff for dinner. I had another go at EVE, but I think I've decided that it really is too absurdly complicated, and commerce obsessed, and I'm not up to investing so much time and energy in a game, no matter how pretty it might be. I read "A new species of Velociraptor [Dinosauria; Theropoda] from the Upper Cretaceous of northern China" in the newest JVP. That was about it for last night.

If you have not already, please do pick up a copy of the mass-market paperback of Daughter of Hounds. The actual release date was yesterday, and I completely forgot. Anyway, now all my novels (except The Five of Cups, thank fuck) are available in inexpensive mmp editions. Also, if you have not yet pre-ordered A is for Alien, there's no time like the present.

And now, I need more coffee....

Current Mood: here
Current Location: Morpheos Rupes
Current Music: Radiohead, "Sulk"

Sadly, not quite enough sleep last night. I was in bed by 2:45 ayem, it was well after 3 o'clock before I found sleep, and then I awoke just before 10 ayem, so....maybe 6.5 hours? I can't get by on that, sadly.

Yesterday, I did 1,145 words on "The Z Word" and finished the story (a total of 4,702 words, written over five days). Jesus fuck, but this is a strange one. I may never listen to ABBA again. At least, not without thinking of zombies. I am entirely unable to judge this story, aside from its obvious weirdness. Spooky (

humglum) likes it a lot, and so does Sonya (

sovay), and they're usually better judges than am I. I feel as though, every month, I look at the new issue of Sirenia Digest and think, No, this is just too weird, or too perverse, or too...something. I was sure, for example, that "Derma Sutra (1891)" would be somehow too intense for readers. And it seems to have been, judging from email and comments here (the only way I have to gauge these things), among the most popular of Sirenia stories. Anyway, yeah, a zombie love story built around ABBA lyrics, with an inexplicable smattering of Kate Bush near the end. I'm thinking the digest may not go out until Sunday, because Vince needs time to get the illustration done, and he's also working on his illustrations for A is for Alien. By the way, we have a cover:

Please have a look at the current eBay auctions, and bid if you are so able. Also, please consider the new Daughter of Hounds mass-market paperback. Thanks.

Anything else to yesterday? I began reading Michael Freeman's Victorians and the Prehistoric: Tracks to a Lost World (thank you, David). Spooky brokered a deal for the sale of the Palaeozoic Museum in New Babbage (SL), to someone who wants to keep the Museum up and running, which is cool. We watched Hal Hartley's intriguing, but terribly uneven, sf film The Girl from Monday (2005). I'm a fan of Hartley's, but this time, I fear he missed the mark. An attempt at a Vonnegut-like satire of American consumer culture, but it gets lost in lousy cinematography, clunky acting, and production values that just weren't up the the task. Later, I got in some work on the background for the Howard's End rp in Second Life (we're up to 27 players now, I think), mostly working out the background of the Roanoke Society, and helping a couple of people with their characters. It's not too early to send me thoughts on your character, by the way, and I strongly urge you to check into your SL account at least every two or three days, so the notices don't pile up on you too badly.

And speaking of Second Life, sometimes the disparity between the way I live mine and the way that Spooky lives hers is rather stunning. Last night, for example, while I was a vampire cowering in the catacombs beneath a church, trying to learn to feed with a fucking syringe because every time I do it the usual way I vomit up all the blood (thank you Ascilla, Lina, and Morgdah), she was hanging out with a candy-colored fairy wolf, just shooting the breeze and eating cupcakes. I get an NC-17 rating, she gets a G. I have this unnerving feeling that she's actually having more fun than me...

( Blue wolves and albino girls with mohawks )

Current Mood: hoding the linel
Current Location: Aetheria
Current Music: Poe, "Could've Gone Mad" (Not ABBA!)

The start of a beautiful afternoon here in Providence today. A steady wind, and the air through my office window is cool and smells very faintly of the sea. The sun is bright.

Quite a good writing day yesterday. I did 1,357 words on Chapter Four of The Red Tree. A slow start, but then it came with relative ease.

And there are days —— most days, really —— when the Life of a Working Writer is exactly as interesting as that second paragraph. Those are the days that do not make for very interesting journal entries.

Two days now since I've left the house, not since that rather dispiriting drive down to Narragansett back on Thursday. I so do not want to return to my reclusive ways, the life I was living in Atlanta, but when I am in the midst of a novel, it's so easy. By the end of the day, I don't feel like seeing people or being seen. I especially don't feel like being seen. And so this descent begins, slipping back. We need to get up to Boston, or down to NYC, where there are people we know, but...that would mean sacrificing at least one, and probably two or three days, I cannot now afford to sacrifice.

Spooky went out and got pizza from Pizza Pie'er on Wickenden Street last night. My new favourite pizza place. Their "meatachoke" is glorious. Meatballs and artichokes. Afterwards, well, yeah. Second Life. A lot of talk about Howards End, and Spooky has made a nice skybox for the builders to hang out in. Tonight, I need to put together a note card, or series of note cards, with the relevant short stories and send them out to group members. We have maybe five or ten slots left open, if I stick with my original cap of 25-30 members, but I might let it expand a bit. I'm starting to think that, at the inception, there will be only two or three active "factions" —— the occult research group based out of the Athenaeum, the Changelings, and maybe, for kid avs, the Children of the Cuckoo down in the warrens. There may not be any call for actual ghouls and vampires for some time (you'll recall, they really don't get a lot of "screen time" in the books). This will largely be a story about more or less human characters, at least in the beginning. This should actually make things a little easier on those who are new to rp.

Oh, and as for New Babbage, the SL steampunk sim where I "cut my teeth," so to speak. I'll be closing down the Palaeozoic Museum and putting those two large parcels up for sale (without the Museum). For now, I will keep the Abney Park Laboratory.

Late, Spooky and I watched an episode of Angel, because we were both in the mood. We picked "Shells" from Season Five. And then I did a little rp in Corvinus (thank you, Sev and Ania), and an odd deal was struck between my Ravnos antitribu and a Toreador woman, a bookseller. Think My Fair Lady, with vampires. Nareth is to be taught manners and how to be a more sociable beast. It ought to at least be hilarious.

The platypus is giving me the hairy eyeball, because I have not yet mentioned the current eBay auctions, or pre-orders for A is for Alien or the mass-market paperback of Daughter of Hounds.

Postscript (1:01 p.m.) —— Spooky just informed me that Rasputina will be playing the Paradise in Boston on the 20th, and I'm wondering if I have clothes to wear, and if I can drag my sorry ass to a show.

Current Mood: hemmed in
Current Location: Hiddekel
Current Music: I Am Kloot, "Avenue of Hope"

So, Spooky called my doctor yesterday, about the tick. And my doctor immediately prescribed a ten-day regimen of doxycycline (one of of the tetracycline antibiotics), as a preventative measure, just in case the Lone Star tick in question was carrying one of the four rather nasty diseases for which they can act as vectors. But, on the other hand, my doctor is a little overzealous with antibiotics, and I've not been on any antibiotic, by choice, since August 2002 (when I needed them for an infected spider bite on my leg). But. I will take the doxycycline, though my instincts tell me not to, because I don't want to risk Alabama getting in the last laugh by rendering me sick all summer with some vermin-borne illness. By the way, the tick in question now floats in a specimen jar of alcohol on my desk. She's a rather fascinating little thing.

Yesterday, we read over what I've written on Chapter One of The Red Tree, again. Recall, we just did this on Sunday. But I wanted to be sure I have the narrator (Sarah Crowe) solidly in my head. With luck, I can finish Chapter One and maybe even toss in a vignette for Sirenia Digest sometime between now and next Wednesday. That will be my last normal "work day," the 21st, before the move (14 days remaining). We also did a lot of packing yesterday. I lost track of how many boxes of books. The new battery for my iBook arrived via the post.

I've been asked to write a "signature review" (one with my name on it) for Publisher's Weekly, though I cannot yet identify the novel or the author. I even get paid. This was one of those things I really didn't have time to take on just now, but I did, anyway.

As promised yesterday, behind the cut are photos that Spooky took on Tuesday of the Ezra Winter murals at the Birmingham Public Library. They are a far sight better than the ones that the Library has online (the link above). Ezra Winter was born in Manistee, Michigan in 1886, and was educated at Olivet College and the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts. He also studied at the Prix de Rome and the American Academy in Rome. After returning to the US, Winter began a successful career as a muralist, and did work in Manhattan, Chicago, and Washington, DC (his studio was in New York City). In "the early 1920s," the Birmingham Public Library commissioned him to do the murals for the main reading room of their (then) newly constructed library building, depicting various figures from literature and history. They're oil on canvas, fixed to the walls with white lead. Winter was present for the mounting of the paintings. I first saw the murals sometime around 1975. Back then, they were sooty and in bad shape, but were cleaned and restored in the 1980s. Anyway, the photos:

( Ezra Winter and the Birmingham Public Library )

Last night, Spooky made a big pot of chili, and after dinner we watched two more episodes from Season Two of Millennium — "Midnight of the Century" and "Goodbye Charlie." It was cool seeing the late Darren McGavin as Frank's father in the former, as McGavin also appeared twice on The X-Files, as agent Arthur Dales. Anyway, then I worked on the Palaeozoic Museum in New Babbage, mostly on the wall in the Great Hall devoted the pterosaurs (Dimorphodon, Pterodactylus, Rhamphorhynchus, and Pteranodon) and fossil birds (Hesperornis and Archaeopteryx). And I think I was in bed sometime after two ayem, and Spooky read to me from House of Leaves until about three ayem. I was up at 9:30, because I'm trying to get on an earlier schedule, even if it means I slept only about six hours. Truly, I've already cut back on Second Life, and will be doing so even more in the end of May. The move, my health, and far too many deadlines.

And this is the very last time I'll post a link to the Amazon wish list thing before birthday -04, though we are only halfway through the Royal Birthday Month. And my thanks for all the comments yesterday. They help, these days, and I don't know that we've had that many for one entry in quite sometime. I should include nasty x-rays of my teeth more often.

350.org.

Current Mood: awake
Current Location: Nena
Current Music: The Smashing Pumpkins, "Blank Page"

Behind the storms of Saturday night and Sunday morning came an enormous wind. The breath of the sky, blowing across Atlanta. Cooler weather, too. A low in the forties (F) last night, and only the low seventies today. Warmer tomorrow. But this wind is impressive, and there were gusts last night to 35 mph. (or 56.32 kph). Today, it's still blowing strong.

And speaking of that which blows...or sucks...or both...

Tomorrow, I have to be in Birmingham for a noon dental appointment (that's my one pm), which means leaving the house by ten ayem, at the latest. And maybe this molar, the one that was cracked in the Great Seizure of October '07, will be pulled, and maybe it won't be. Hopefully, we'll be back in Atlanta before sunset. However, if I return one more tooth shy, I'll be out of commission for at least a couple of days, which means no writing and no packing. We only have 15 days until we go back to Birmingham to get everything that's in storage there (and has been since November 2002) and only 18 days until the move to Providence. There is not time for mouth trauma, but that means nothing to how things will be.

Yesterday...a very bad day. But, and still, we read through all that has been written on Chapter One of The Red Tree. It's better than I recall. Maybe I can get back to work on the chapter late this week, after the dentist. That's all the writing-work there was to yesterday. I had a very hot bath. We packed and packed and packed, mostly books. I had to order a new battery for my iBook ($139.02, so ouch), and Spooky had to reserve the U-Haul truck for the 27th. About six pm, I left the house and walked to (ugh) Starbuck's, because our landlord needed to show the place to a prospective tenant. I sat and drank, overpriced mediocre coffee and finished Chris Beard's book on the origin of anthropoids. A rather good last chapter, largely devoted to the problem of Henry Fairfield Osborn's racism and also to the ongoing issue of "pithecophobia"* An hour later, I walked home again, to learn that the prospective tenant never fucking showed, so I'd exiled myself to an hour at Starbuck's for naught. After dinner, more packing, until, finally, I begged Spooky for a comfort movie, so we watched Serenity again. I was in bed by three, a little late, but there you go. Seven hours sleep.

As for today, I expect I'll wash my hair, then spend the rest of it working on the Palaeozoic Museum in New Babbage and, well, packing. Only about half the books in my office are boxed. There's no chance I'll get any writing done today, between the distractions and the impending dentistry, and I'm not up to that sort of futility — sitting here, struggling to write through the chaos. And I need to drop Vince an email about Sirenia Digest #30. That's a tiny smidge of work, I suppose.

Yesterday,

jtglover asked me, "What do you think is your best story? Top three?" And I said I'd think about it and post a reply today. It's damned difficult, and the list changes so frequently. But right now, I'd say they are:

1. "Houses Under the Sea" (from Thrillers II, Cemetery Dance Publications, 2007; to be reprinted in The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror Vol. 19).

2. "La Peau Verte" (from To Charles Fort, With Love, Subterranean Press, 2005).

3. "In View of Nothing" (Sirenia Digest #16, March 2007; to be reprinted in A is for Alien)

I would also list, among my "best" short stories, "The Ape's Wife,", "The Steam Dancer," "Andromeda Among the Stones," "The Road of Pins," "Riding the White Bull," "A Season of Broken Dolls,", and "So Runs the World Away." Your mileage will vary, as this is a terribly subjective question. And there are several stories I feel guilty for not including. Anyway, Herr Ornithorhynchus just showed up with my coffee, steamy hot and not mediocre, so I shall wrap this up.

* A psychological disorder that paleontologist William King Gregory sardonically "discovered" to account for those suffering from an irrational fear of apes and monkeys, stemming from the truth of humanity's own common ancestry with them ("Two views of the origin of man," 1927; Science 65: 601-5). The term derives from the Greek (pithekos ape + phobos fear). Sadly, it's probably as common now as it was is Gregory's day. Hence, creationism and its gussied-up stepchild, "intelligent" design.

Current Mood: not yet as bad as yesterday
Current Location: Yilgarn
Current Music: Smashing Pumpkins, "Stand Inside Your Love"

As predicted, no writing yesterday, but plenty else. And, best of all, Spooky's mom (whose name is Carol) emailed her to report of her field trip, on my behalf, to the Moosup Valley area of western Rhode Island. Here's a quote from the email:

Actually, I've been working on the "journey" all day--gathering old plat maps, topos, putting photos in contact sheet format, etc.

The trip itself was fine. It's very rural and wooded out there. About the only outstanding features along Moosup Valley road were in Moosup Valley, which consisted of a large graveyard, library, church and grange. All of which I photographed. The whole area is an historic preservation district, so there are old places around. Just not too many out by the road. I did photograph the Mount Vernon Tavern ca 1760 along Rte 14, and then all the buildings in "town." There was a house opposite the end of Barbs Hill Road, which I photographed. It was probably 1800's. No date visible. Barbs hill road itself is a narrow gravel road which I decided not to go down. Heavily wooded on both sides and I know that some people out there are really touchy about people using their private roads as a "cut through". I'm a coward.

If you go to Terraserver (put in Moosup Valley road as the location) and look at ariel photos of the area you will see that the whole area is heavily forested, so you don't see a whole lot from the road. The photos were taken when the leaves were off of the trees so it's possible to see the distribution of white pines among the predominantly oak trees. There are also hickory and red maple and cherry. The latter two are probably more prevalent in the swampy areas. There are alot of swampy areas at the bases of the large hills. I am going to send you some topo maps that show the size of the hills. Just like what you encounter out along 102 as you go west past 95 and into CT. The hills are totally boulder strewn down their sides with the trees growing up amongst them. The higher places, along the tops of the ridges, or hills, have more soil and seem to be good farmland. Every low spot seems to have a swamp filled with skunk cabbage.

So, I'll write one more piece for the May issue of Sirenia Digest (#30), then get the last bit of work done on the A is for Alien ms., and then it's back to work on The Red Tree. Maybe in as little as a week. Of course, the pace of packing is picking up, and sooner, rather than later, that's gonna start seriously messing with my ability to writing (and never mind the thousand other moving-related things that have to be done by the end of May). Ah, and Spooky's dad (Richard) has returned from Thailand.

Yesterday, we read all the way through the new piece, the one for Sirenia Digest (#30). It works much, much better than I thought. And Spooky likes it a lot. But it is brutal, even by the standards of the digest. I sent it to

sovay, and she helpfully read it and wrote back (and I hope she doesn't mind this quote), "I don't know all the reasons it worries you, but if one of them is because the piece might not work as a story, that at least is unjustified. It's probably the most brutal of any of the pieces I've read for Sirenia and it works very well: 'We need not note the screams.' I actually really like it...If you are more comfortable locking it away in a drawer, I cannot argue with that. But as a piece of story, it is certainly worth the reading." In response to my trying to second guess my readership, the digest's readership, and my fears that the piece is too dark, Sonya replied, "However the audience reacts is its own responsibility. Yours is to the story." Which is a) true, and b) not especially comforting. It still needs a title.

Also, I packed four more boxes, mostly old issues of National Geographic, because I never throw anything away.

After the work, there was dinner at the Vortex (@ L5P) with Byron, and, then, back home, we watched the (for us) new episode of Doctor Who. And I just gotta say, of the companions we could presently have — Rose Tyler, Martha Jones, Sally Sparrow, and Astrid Peth — we get, instead, Donna Noble. Who just annoys me. Hopefully, she will annoy me less, as time goes by. Byron left, and we watched the new Battlestar Galactica, which was good, but somehow felt like it should have been better. I think commercials simply ruin the flow of this show. I finished reading "New bats (Mammalia: Chiroptera) from the late Eocene and early Oligocene, Fayum Depression, Egypt" in the new JVP, and we read more of House of Leaves, Navidson's attempt to rescue Holloway's doomed expedition. Later, there was some work on the Palaeozoic Museum in New Babbage (Second Life). My interest in the Museum project has been reawakened, now that some of the sculpty software (namely, Archipelis) has caught up with my needs, as regards creating /recreating SL facsimiles of Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins' Crystal Palace/Palaeozoic Museum dinosaurs. There was a brief "absence" seizure last night.

Coffee. Red Bull. Speed. Cocaine. Whatever you got, platypus, throw it my way.

Current Mood: nerdy
Current Location: The Cathaysian terranes
Current Music: Tori Amos, "Cloud on My Tongue"

More than eight hours sleep, thank the gods of 21st-Century generic pharmaceuticals. But it left me filled with dreams (mostly of Mordor, apocalypse, and collecting Triassic archosaurs) and disoriented — pause here, because Bill Schafer of Subterranean Press called, and we talked a bit. Er, where was I. Okay, who cares. Next.

Yesterday, I wrote 1,073 words on "In the Dreamtime of Lady Resurrection," without absinthe. I hope to finish it tomorrow. I would be finishing it today, probably, but Spooky has proclaimed that we will be seeing Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix today, and I can think of no compelling reason why that should not be so. Nymphadora rocks my socks (worry not, any spoilers will be placed behind cuts, at least on LJ). And after the film, we have dinner with Byron, who we have not seen in a couple of weeks.

Good walk last night, though the humidity was a monster. I erected my first attempt at a building in Second Life, just to start getting the hang of construction. Two adjacent walls, a first and second floor, a bit of roof, and then I tore it all down again. Before I can actually begin the Palaeozoic Museum, I must sit down and draw out a plan (based somewhat on Hawkins' sketches). Spooky's learning Wings 3D, a sculpting programme that we will be using to build the actual dinosaurs and such. Oh, and she's talking a trilobite stained-glass window for the atrium. My concept is sort of a steampunk cathedral dedicated to 19th-Century paleontology. Meanwhile, of course, there are the the rp travails of Nareth Nishi, which is that other part of my Second Life and which you may follow by reading her journal.

In this First Life, Spooky has just about finished her second Elizabethan owl sculpture (a commission), which you may get a peek at here.

Oh, and another episode of Deadwood last night before bed, "No Other Sons & Daughters."

Okay, I need coffee and a bath, so I think that's it for now. Other than a reminder of the current eBay auctions.

Current Mood: I've been worse
Current Location: Kayne Crater
Current Music: Rasputina, "Draconian Crackdown"

As is the case with most of the southeast at the moment, it's very hot here in Atlanta. Not as bad today as yesterday, when we got very near 100F. So we spent the day indoors, quietly celebrating Spooky's birthday. I only went out for about twenty minutes, just after sunset, but even that late it was still too hot to sit on the porch. There were strawberry cupcakes with vanilla frosting, and for dinner we had a very fine roast chicken, good bread, and an exquisite bottle of Armenian pomegranate wine.

After that, Byron came over with a PC we're trying to hook up to get Spooky on Second Life, so that we can both be inworld at the same time. The two of them worked at getting the Windows box up and running for about two hours. Me, I stayed out of the way, because this nixar knows when she's out of her element. In the end, there was some problem with the router, which Byron is trying to sort out today. Late last night, we watched another ep of Firefly, "The Train Job."

My thanks to Gordon Duke (

thingunderthest) for his incredibly generous gift of an LJ permanent account. I suppose this means I just got a life sentence, eh? It's kind of weird, to think I might be sitting here (or somewhere else), still keeping this blog, ten years hence. Also, my thanks to everyone who offered help snagging the Blade Runner: The Final Cut .flv file. I have it now. Frankly, I can't see why Warner's being such an ass about this. Free publicity and all.

I did write on Saturday, better than a thousand words on The Dinosaurs of Mars, but mostly it was a sort of practice run, as I tore the story apart yet again and began putting it together a different way. I just have to find the right way in. The door with the tiger behind it, so to speak. I'm trying not to rush myself, because I need to do this one properly. But, at the same time, the clock is ticking. Oh, for the luxury of a clockless life. The luxury of writing books on no one's timetable but my own. That time is long gone, unless there's a bestseller somewhere in my future, and I doubt that in the worst way. Yesterday, I wrote the prolegomena from Sirenia Digest #19, which should go out to subscribers this afternoon or evening. I am very pleased with "The Steam Dancer," and with Vince's illustration for it.

I would like to point out that Amazon.com is now taking pre-orders for the mass-market paperback of Low Red Moon. Naturally, lots of pre-orders will make my publisher happy, and it's always good to have your publisher happy. Note that you can buy it with Daughter of Hounds for a mere $19.19. The book with be released on August 7, 2007.

Things are going well in Second Life. I believe Nareth Nishi is transitioning from a period of exploration to a period of focused creativity. In Bababge, I have been offered the opportunity to work towards a virtual construction of Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins' never-realised Palaeozoic Museum (I wrote that wiki article, by the way), about which I have long been passionate. I will be working with Sir Arthur and others to make this a reality. I just have to get my building skills up to snuff. And since I only have so much time for SL (less and less, it seems), there will be no more pole dancing and suchlike. I'm a respectable woman, now. My thanks, though, to all those who came out for that, and big thanks for the tips.

Also, Spooky has finished the first in a series of ten mini-Cthulhu sculptures. This one's sold, but seven are still available. You can see photos via her dollwork LJ,

squid_soup.

Okay. The platypus is glaring, which means it's time wrap this up. Later, kiddos.