Caitlín R. Kiernan

Last night, I got word from my agent that my editor at Penguin likes the proposal for Blood Oranges (working title) quite a lot. So, it seems I have one less thing to worry about. Now, I just have to get the book written.

The insomnia came again last night, but I resisted the urge to take Ambien.

But, as for yesterday...

I didn't get anything written. The insomnia and the effects of the Ambien conspired to muddle my head, and I decided it would be better to spend the day on research, instead. So, we drove down to Green Hill, just west of Moonstone Beach. Green Hill is the setting for "Teratophobia," and I wanted to get more of a feel for the place.

The beach is wonderful at Green Hill. The Permian-aged granite beds known as the Narragansett Pier Plutonic Suite is exposed here, so, unlike Moonstone, it's a rocky beach. The sun was bright, and there was hardly any wind at all, so the day was warm for November. We parked at the end of Green Hill Beach Road (41°21'56.47"N, 71°35'59.94"W) and walked east, all the way to the shore below the end of Green Hill Avenue ( 41°21'55.67"N, 71°35'39.78"W). The tide was very low when we arrived, and it had left behind many things, including hundreds of starfish. Indeed, in places, the stranded dead and dying starfish formed a veritable carpet among the boulders. I can only imagine how bad the stench would have been on a hot summer's day. They were all of a single species, Asterias forbesii, so far as I could see. Assuming this stranding must occur once or twice daily, I'm guessing the starfish population off the beach at Green Hill must be enormous.

The lingering effects of the 1996 oil spill are more in evidence here than at Moonstone. At many places, a rubbery mat of congealed oil remains between the rocks. In some spots, it's at least half an inch thick, black (or dark grey) and slippery. Regardless, the birds, fish, and invertebrates appear to have rebounded quite well.

I sat on the sand and made notes. We found spiny purple urchins (Arbacia punctulata) and moon shells (Lunatia heros). We found the remains of at least one small shark (a dogfish, either Squalus acanthias or Mustelis canis), bits of lobster and horseshoe crabs, bones from the wing of a herring gull. There was a small flock of sanderlings (Calidris alba), along with the usual cormorants. There were oysters and clams, periwinkles and mussels.

Though my feet have been bad again lately, and I'm having to use my walking stick, we managed to walk the better part of a mile, when all was said and done. It was a fine day, and we didn't leave the beach until the sun began to set. Heading back to the car, we found a trail of weasel tracks in the sand and followed them until they vanished in the grass. I think we got home around 6:30 p.m. I was sort of amazed to see that we'd taken 89 photographs, which means I have images with which to adorn the journal for the next few days, even if I only post half of them. There are fifteen behind the cut:

( 18 November 2009 Part 1 )

Having done the WoW.com interview, and having seen comments to it, and thinking over lots of comments I've heard inworld over the last year, I have drawn a rather depressing conclusion. It seems to me that the players who are most familiar with the game's "lore" are not interested in story, but are, instead, engaging in a sort of data mining, that they may then use said data in an "I-know-more-than-you" pissing contest. And, on the one hand, it's sad, because WoW ought to be about story, and on the other hand, most of the "lore" is so badly written that it pretty much amounts to The Simarillion for Dummies. People see internal logic where, in fact, there's usually only what was convenient for Blizzard. Anyway, I should never begin an entry on such a dispiriting point.

Yesterday....

Hoping that a change of scenery would jog something loose and help me get the proposal for Blood Oranges (working title) written, we left the House and went to the Athenaeum. And it worked, at least to some degree. I managed to get a rough version of the synopsis worked out. It still needs tweaking, and a bit more added on about the ending, and, of course, the book will not look much like the synopsis, but everyone involved knows that up front. I suspect it's a bit heavy on theme, and a bit light on plot, but that's not surprising. As I've said about a million times, I can't know a story before it happens, and it won't happen until I write it. To wit, a response to something I said yesterday, from Geoffrey (readingthedark):

However you go about it, the authenticity and commitment that you place in story (partially because of Campbell) coupled with how it's not real until it's actually written (and the day-to-day nature of the multiverse) means that you'll only know the story when it happens. Reducing the unknown into a proposal is tough because there's no way to guess the future when authenticity is all that really matters. Being meticulous and delicate and ruthless and telling nothing that could possibly be untrue doesn't fit into a spreadsheet no matter what you do.

Yeah. What he said.

When I was done at the Athenaeum, Spooky and I didn't really feel much like heading home. Instead, we drove east, past Brown University, to Wayland Square. We got coffee and cookies at a deli/coffee shop called, I think, The Edge. Good coffee, and cheaper than the swill from Starbucks. Then we spent some time in Myopic Books, which is just around the corner. We were good and bought nothing. The day was grey and chilly, though the temperature was in the mid sixties. The sky looked like snow. Before heading back across the river to Federal Hill, we stopped at Eastside Market, and I found myself staring at a full-wall display of Stephenie Meyers' idiotic "saga." And it occurred to me, not for the first time, that the people who did the art direction for the original covers of the Twilight books did a nice job. Would that my books had covers half that artful. Indeed, the original cover for Twlight would have made a far better cover for The Red Tree than the lurid "paranormal romance" template it was saddled with. Think about it. It's true.

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Last night, I took off my writing hat (the conscious writing hat, I mean; the unconscious one never comes off), and Spooky and I spent three hours and forty-five minutes in a marathon grind for reputation with Timbermaw Hold in Wintersong and Felwood. Shortly after midnight, both Shaharrazad and Suraa reached exalted status, and were awarded the title Diplomat.

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Please have a look at the current eBay auctions. Thanks.

And here are eleven photographs from yesterday:

( 10 November 2009 )

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.

Yesterday earned the first L to stain my engagement calendar since December 31st. The less said, the better.

Anyway, because a number of people expressed interest in seeing it, here's the proposal that sold Daughter of Hounds. If you've not yet read the novel and intend to, there's enough similarity between the proposal and the actual novel that you may want to wait until afterwards before reading this (seriously). It was written on or about April 16th, 2004, although I did not begin writing the book until October of that year.

( 638 words )

Pretty awful. Fortunately, that is not the book I wrote. I think what I find strangest of all, though, is that I'm not entirely certain when or why Abalyn Gray became Saben White. Probably, when I was in Providence that summer, I found the name "Saben White" on a tombstone. In many ways, the novel that Daughter of Hounds became is the opposite of the novel described in this proposal.

Tiddley-pom.

Today, I'm going to write, 1,000 times, "I am no longer twenty-five years old." That would come to seven or eight thousand words (depending whether you count "twenty-five" as one word or two) and take care of any goddamn writing quota I might have for today and a number of days to come. Uh. Anyway. I am no longer twenty-five, and worse still, I'm out of practice. And this morning (almost afternoon) I have a hangover that would immobilize a giant ground sloth, yet here I am, typing, typing, typing away. Personally, I blame Brian De Palma. 'Cause I know it was that gawdsawful Black Dahlia thing that got me thinking about lesbian strip bars. Yesterday evening, even as Spooky was planning a perfectly wonderful Kindernacht, I was plotting something more...let's say "adult" and leave it at that. Byron called, and I asked if he knew of any lesbian titty bars in Atlanta, because Byron knows a lot of titty bars, and no, he said, not officially. That is, he did not know of any titty bars officially set aside for lesbians. We'd heard about a place up on...gods, I can't even remember...but I do remember the place is called Swinging Richard's. However, it all seemed rather vague. We went to dinner at The Vortex at L5P. I was good and only had one beer. We came back home. The boredom was oozing from my pores like pine sap. I searched through Creative Loafing for anything interesting. The closest I came was a performance of the "Vagina Monologues" at Grandma Luke's...and actually, Spooky was the one who found that. She pointed it out, and I said something like "No, no, not pussies and pancakes. That's not what I mean at all."

But I was persistent, and finally, sometime after ten, possessed of only a dim rumour and my best boy drag, we set out for a Certain Part of Town. Not a lesbian strip club, but a strip club where lesbians are not unwelcome. This is the South. You take the scraps you're thrown. And I decided it would be a Good Idea to mix any number of energy drinks with Mexican beer and shots of tequila. My grand triumph of the night was managing not to throw up. And I did not go to jail, so if I groped anyone, they either a) asked for it or b) are used to that sort of thing. I know I kept introducing Spooky as Cap'n Bee Fart, because...well, never mind. It seemed funny at the time. Because drunks have access to an entirely different sense of humour. And now, I have this goddamn hangover. And a message on my cell from Harlan. And I think I'm expected to work. But at least I'm not pissing anything unnatural, which I take as a good sign.

Yesterday...ugh. The time has come to write proposals, and all day yesterday was spent on one paragraph. One damn paragraph that I will rewrite today. The encapsulation of an unwritten book. An idiotic endeavor if ever an endeavor were idiotic. Yesterday I found the page of notes I made for Joey LaFaye while we were in Rhode Island, a page of notes dated 7/27/06, and there was hardly anything there I could use, hardly anything I hadn't already rewritten in my mind. I exchanged a stupendous number of e-mails with sovay yesterday, and I thank her for letting me kvetch in her general direction while I wrestled with this idiotic endeavor. I cannot summarize an unwritten book. How many times have I said this? I cannot summarize an unwritten book, because (one, two, three) it hasn't happened yet! But still, I have to try. This one and two more. And that's what I'll be doing with today. And maybe writing a poem about ravens who are wizards, or wizards who are ravens.

A question from the comments to yesterday's entry:

Which brings me to a question. Would you have any qualms about selling the movie rights to your work? Which of your books would you most like to see on the big screen? Who would you want to direct it? Who would you want to act in it?

Well, actually that's more like four questions, isn't it? Er...the book I'd most like to see adapted for screen, that would be Low Red Moon, with Daughter of Hounds in second place. Brian De Palma is who I'd most prefer did not direct. I'd be fine with del Toro, or David Fincher, or any number of other people. Just not Brian De Palma, please. I've been saying that Scarlett Johansson is my pick for Narcissa Snow. I've been saying that for years. In Daughter of Hounds, Deacon should be played by Steve Buscemi. Clea Helen D'Etienne DuVall would be Sadie. The Bailiff would be played by Sid Haig. Soldier has to be Katee Sackhoff. Ian McShane has to be George Ballou. And that's as far as I've gotten, because these damned actors take forever to return my calls.

Okay. That's enough for now. The platypus says it's time to hurt myself some more. Sounds good to me.