Caitlín R. Kiernan

The more I listen to Brown Bird, the more they amaze me.

Two Worlds and In Between, deluxe and trade editions, is now officially sold out.

And tomorrow is the day. But if you get your hopes up so much you think I've been crowned Grand Xena She-Ra, Wonder Woman, Queen of the Known Universe the First, you have only yourself to blame for the inevitable disappointment.

Today, I take...more. And we see if things get better. If I can remain functional. Because, apparently, it's one thing to have irrational fears of How Bad Things Are, and another thing entirely to have rational fears of How Bad Things Are. It's the same shit, either way. The meds just make me care a whole lot less. Well, and it's nice not having the seizures. Also, it's cool knowing that if someone were to try and drink my blood, they would die a horrible death.

"She came by her insanity honestly."

The first half of yesterday was a mad whirlwind of this, that, and the other, attending to various questions and details for various projects until, by, 3 p.m., I was exhausted and still hadn't written a single word. So, it being Samhain, and Hallowe'en, I took the afternoon off. Which was stupid, as I have too much work to be doing that. But I did. Spooky went to the market, and I wasted about a half hour of my life playing RIFT, and...well, that was a dumb idea. Not working, I mean. I took a hot bath before dinner. Spooky brought me a Black Forest cake (my favorite). We carved jack-o'lanterns. There were trick-or-treaters. We watched Its the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown (1966), and the two new episodes of Beavis and Butthead.

The former was bittersweet and nostalgic, a gentle amusement from an age when lies were better at hiding the ugliness of the world from children (and parents tried a lot harder). The latter was funny as hell, and, as I said last night on Twitter, television has crawled so far up its own (porn, porn, porn, porn, porn) asshole that Beavis and Butthead (porn, porn, porn, porn, porn) actually come off as rather smart kids (porn, porn, porn, porn, porn). Beavis and Butthead on Jersey Shore and LMFAO's "Champagne Showers"? It's pretty incisive commentary on this dear sweet filthy world, kittens.

And we watched John Fawcett's Ginger Snaps (2000). It has aged very, very well. Sure, the final creature effects suffer from budget constraint (though the makeup up until then is brilliant), but it remains one of the very few genuinely good werewolf films. It's perfectly, morbidly, hilariously, grimly, gleefully horrific, and, in the end, an impressive examination of teenage alienation. Of finding oneself in that darkest of dark places, and at that moment you've spent a short life fearing above all others. If you've never seen this film, what the fuck's wrong with you? Oh, you were only ten when it was released....

Yes, if I had a daughter, I truly would name her Ampersand. Well, on the birth certificate it would be listed as & Rose Kiernan, but we'd call her Amp.

Thank you, readingthedark. Thank you, The National. You guys rock.

Also, you might be a loony Xtian whackjob, but you go, Anne Rice (at least she wrote three good novels):

Lestat and Louie feel sorry for vampires that sparkle in the sun. They would never hurt immortals who choose to spend eternity going to high school over and over again in a small town — anymore than they would hurt the physically disabled or the mentally challenged. My vampires possess gravitas. They can afford to be merciful...The idea that if you are immortal you would go to high school instead of Katmandu or Paris or Venice, it’s the vampire dumbed down for kids. But it’s worked. It’s successful. It makes kids really happy. And here we are, back at Beavis and Butthead.

It's nice to see Anne Rice fucking grow a pair for an hour. And if you think I just made a sexist comment, grow a pair, please. After all, do you know I didn't mean ovaries? But, wait...wouldn't that also be sexist. Maybe I meant ears.

Oh, there are pumpkin photos from last night (mine was stolen, just like last year):

( Jack! )

Yes, kittens, it's going to snow 1-3 inches here in Providence tonight, and we're the lucky part of New England. Apparently, Autumn took the year off; I don't blame it. I hear it's snowing in Manhattan right now.

Still, I wish I were at the sea today. I want to watch a heavy snow fall on the olive-green waves.

Okay, here's some news, so perk up those ears. I've been sitting on a secret for many, many months, and many of you know this. On November 2nd, there will be some manner of revelation, and on November 9th, all will be revealed. That's Wednesday, and then the next Wednesday. The NSA has agreed to declassify the files, and the MiBs will go public. The gag order will be rescinded. Some of you will not hear the news here first. Machineries are in motion that are far greater than am I. But...I believe there will be a lot of happy campers among you, and I think the wait will have been worth it. It's worn me ragged, keeping this secret.

And that's what I worked on yesterday, this secret thing. Meanwhile, Spooky attended to line edits on Blood Oranges, using the old iBook (Victoria; the old girl's got a lot of life left in her).

---

Yesterday evening, as the sun was setting, we arrived at the Steel Yard, for the 6th Annual Iron Pour. A most appropriate post-industrial celebration of Samhain (though, of course, Samhain proper isn't until Monday). Five-thousand pounds of molten steel poured from a blast furnace, molten metal to fill jack-o'-lanterns, a great skull-shaped mold (the skull, weighing hundreds of pounds lifted, glowing, by block and tackle). Hundreds of voices screaming, "Fire." Enormous effigies to be devoured by fire: demons, witches, the head of a goat. A woman with the head and wings of a bat, dressed all in black and on stilts. A chainsaw that belches flames. The burning effigies are revealed to have wrought-iron skeletons. Deliriously eldritch and aharmonic anti-melodies played on violins, saxophones, and coronets. Volcanic showers and liquid iron of sparks filling the air, and raining down almost atop our heads. That's the Iron Pour in Providence. There are pictures behind the cut, below (though, batteries were low, we forgot to change them, and the camera, therefore, acted up).

Do people know about the not-so-secret pagan rites in Providence? Well, more than know about the Big Chair Rites of Moosup Valley.

---

After my post yesterday, and my mention of seeing The Rapture (1991) again, an analogy occurred to me. It's one thing to call the Judeo-Christian god petty and sadistic. It's another to explain what you mean. So, here's one of a...well, of countless...examples: That whole Garden of Eden thing, Adam and Eve and the serpent. That chestnut. Here's the same story - the very same story – recast in less fantastic language. An unnamed adult (ADULT) places two three year olds, a boy and a girl, in a large room filled with every manner of toy they might ever desire, every sweet confection, a computer with the best games, every imaginable three-year-old delight, and the children are told, "You may play with all these things, and eat whatever you wish, and as much as you wish. But...you see that jar of Watermelon-flavored Jelly-Belly jelly beans over there? You do? Okay, now...that's the one thing you must not eat from. Now, I'm going to leave you to your own devices. Be good, kiddos." (No explanation is offered as to why the beans must be left alone.) And the adult goes away. And the two children have a blast, for days and days and days.

But, eventually, a loudspeaker mounted in one corner begins to whisper sibilantly about those Watermelon-flavored Jelly Belly jelly beans. It whispers, and most persistently, and, kids will be kids, and...when the unnamed adult returns to find the forbidden beans of jelly have been tasted, the two children are shamed with the harshest possible language, then tossed from the paradise of that room. They're thrown out into the cold winter streets, and guards are placed at the doors, that they can never again enter the marvelous room. Because they ate jelly beans that were placed there so that they would be tempted to eat the jelly beans. And there was that voice planted there to help them along, right? Don't think for a moment the adult didn't put that speaker there (whether or not the voice was his or hers, that's another matter). But it gets better, which is to say it gets worse. For having tasted the Watermelon Jelly Bellies, no child may ever again enter the room, and all the descendents of these two children will suffer unspeakable agonies and trials, and die, and face an eternity of torment unless they love the sadistic adult (ADULT) in question, despite this dirty, little trick with the jelly beans and the whispers...and, well, you know the story. And no, this is no more simplistic a parable than the original. Just a tiny bit more honest. And don't give me that "freewill" bullshit. ADULT knew better. He/she knew the nature of the children, she/he made them. The whole thing was rigged. For the Bible tells us so.

---

Spooky's Hallowe'en Sale isn't quite over, so have a look.

Last night, some good RP in Insilico, and then a tiny dash of RIFT. Then we watched last week's episode of Ryan Murphy's American Horror Story, and...it was...surprisingly better. It was actually...haunting. A tremendous number of story threads and themes were skillfully tossed about and interwoven and, hell, it would have made a fine last episode. Still that Dark Shadows camp, but elevated just a bit. Moments of genuine chill. I think it's possibly more interested in the problem of hauntings than in ghosts, and that would be a good thing. Oh, and now Zachary Quinto, also known as Spock #2 and My Second Husband (you get to guess who's my First and Third husbands are), has joined the cast...so I have to keep watching.

Later, I read Steinbeck's The Log of the Sea of Cortez until I could get to sleep, about four-thirty ayem.

And now, I hear those black panel vans...You know, Tom Waits* needs to write a song entitled "Black Panel Vans."

Clandestine,
Aunt Beast

( 28 October 2011 )

* "Mankind is kept alive by bestial acts."

Yesterday, I wrote only 810 words on "The Prayer of Ninety Cats," but I spent hours and hours picking though words from the Great Nothing. The story is, at this point, 6,145 words long, so I'm guessing it'll go to 7,000+ words. This month, Sirenia Digest subscribers, you get no mere vignette, but a full-fledged short story.

Great talk with my editor at Dark Horse yesterday. Details as soon as I may.

No Thanksgiving here today, and if you want to know why I do not observe Thanksgiving, well I wrote this last year, on November 23rd:

This whole Thanksgiving thing came up yesterday. That is, the fact that I do not observe this whole Thanksgiving thing. And various people (including my mother) were like, oh come on, you have a lot of things to be thankful for. To which I can only reply that, in this instance, thankfulness implies that there is someone or something out there to thank. I would say that yes, sure, I am appreciative of many things in my life— Spooky, my mom, Spooky's mom and dad, Rhode Island, being able to mostly pay my bills, the sea, and so forth. But being appreciative does not entail being thankful, in the sense that is generally meant when people speak of Thanksgiving. I am not thankful, not in the Thanksgiving sense, which implies gratitude towards some "higher power," even when you've completely stripped the holiday of its Christian roots and made it just "Turkey Day." I can appreciate turkey any day. I don't need a special day to eat turkey, or cranberries, or that disgusting stuff made of sweet potatoes with melted marshmallows on top. And there's no one for me to "give thanks," other than myself, and Spooky, and my readers, and maybe half a dozen other people. So, I'm not trying to be a wet blanket. I just don't do Thanksgiving. I try to make sure the people in my life to whom I am grateful for this or that know that I am grateful for their kindness and concern. I don't need to set aside a special day for it. To some, it may seem like I'm worrying over semantics and only mincing words. But that's what I do. All day, almost every day. I mince words, in an effort to get to what I genuinely mean. Usually, I choose my words with obsessive care.

That said, as I was too busy and tired to properly observe either Mabon or Samhain, we'll be having a huge autumnal meal to retroactively celebrate both. I am told there will be Brussels sprouts.

And here it is November, again.

Much to my surprise, Narragansett Beer has acknowledged The Red Tree. It's a weird, weird world. But weird is my friend.

A quick note to Sirenia Digest subscribers. #47 should be going out to subscribers this evening, only a day late. So, watch your inboxes. And the skies. Always keep watching the skies.

A strange weekend, and the strangeness really had nothing to do with Samhain or Halloween. I was so under the weather all week, and as Friday evening rolled around, I was feeling a bit better. Dusk found us at the Steel Yard, for the annual Iron Pour. But there were far more people than last year, and just as things were getting started, I could no longer tolerate all those bodies and faces and voices. It was impossible to see much of anything, anyway. So we left, got some Chinese takeout, and headed back home. We watched M. Night Shyamalan's Signs (2002) again. This made my third time, and I still think it's a brilliant film (and, indeed, am of the opinion that Shyamalan has made only one less-than-brilliant film, The Happening, and if you should disagree, please do not do so here).

Saturday was the first day in about a week that I really felt like working. That is, that I felt well enough to work. I wrote a rather longish prolegomena for Sirenia Digest #47. Why the hell doesn't LJ know how to spell prolegomena? Godsdamned illiterate program. Anyway, while I was writing, Spooky went to the market. She came home and announced that it was beautiful outside (72F, with 10-20 mph winds), and that I should get out of the House. And, really, it was the first day since last weekend that I'd genuinely felt up to the daunting perils of Outside. So I got dressed, and we drove through downtown Providence to Benefit Street. We walked. We watched RISD students (some in costume, some not) and great swirls of leaves buoyed by the wind. We spent a little time in the Athenaeum (another word LJ can't spell). Oh it can't spell Samhain, either. Anyway...Benefit Street was made for Bradbury Weather.

Back home, we carved a pumpkin, and I made a very simple, but very yummy, beef stew. We also had Dogfish Head "Midas Touch" ale. It's cool stuff actually. Barley, honey, white muscat grapes, and saffron, brewed from a recipe rediscovered by a molecular archeologist who analyzed residue from 2,700-year-old Iron Age drinking vessels discovered in central Turkey. Delicious. We lit candles on the altar, and that was our Samhain feast. Later, we lit the jack-o'-lantern and gave out candy to trick-or-treaters. There are a few photos from the weekend behind the cut (below).

And now it's November, again. And I'm back on Caitlín Standard Time (CST; originally, Caitlín Stabilizing Time), which is to say, for the fifth consecutive year, we're ignoring the end of Daylight Savings Time. I know it's traditional to hate Daylight Savings Time, but I don't. I much prefer it. So, we've lived on it since 2004.

Please have a look at the current eBay auctions, if you've not already. Bid if you are able and so disposed. I will mention that we likely won't be offering The Black Alphabet again for quite some time. This round of auctions ends tomorrow.

And now, some photos, and I must take platypus in hand and get to work:

( 30 October-31 October 2009 )

Damn, I just realized I didn't upload photos of our jack-o'-lantern. Ah, well...tomorrow.

Got to admit, I'm more than a little disappointed in how my first New England Hallowe'en is shaping up. No parties. No costumes. No pumpkin patch. Given we're on the second floor, there won't even be trick-or-treaters. My schedule right now didn't even allow me to take today off, which is just...wrong. So, I suppose that Spooky and I will do something together tonight, watch some scary movies, eat something sweet, mark the turning of the wheel and the beginning of a new year, and whatnot. But, yeah, disappointed. Maybe next year.

Blah.

Yesterday, I did 1,208 words on "Metamorphosis C." I thought this story would have sort of a Cronenberg feel, and, instead, so far, it's entirely different. Filled with a sort of cold, quiet menace. A sort of resignation. More Stanislaw Lem, by way of William Gibson, maybe.

Last night, after a takeaway dinner of hot and sour soup, egg drop soup, and steamed dumplings, we watched Kenneth Branagh's recent production of As You Like It (2006). It was nice, set in 19th Century Japan, and I have a weakness for anachronistic takes on Shakespeare. Later, there was WoW, of course. Voimakas, my Draenei hunter, and Jalokivi, Spooky's Draenei shaman. But for some reason, we took a quest from the Stonetalon Mountains that meant running, running, running south, all the way through the Barrens, into the Thousand Needles, and finally to the eastern border of Feralas. I think we spent an hour and a half simply running. Still, Voimakas made Lvl 29. And got a better sword off a dead harpy. So it wasn't all slog.

I got to bed about 2:30 ayem, and slept an amazing eight and a half hours (this is my brain, telling me it's exhausted).

If you haven't already, please, please, please preorder A is for Alien. I'm quite sure this will be one of my best books to date. Which is to say, I am especially proud of it.

Now...words.

Not a very Samhain or Hallowe'en sort of sentiment, I know. But it's true, and it's the subject line that popped into my head. Hubero, brawny little fellow that he is, says Byron is his Daddy, so it's all okay.

Lots of chaos and fuss hereabouts, getting ready for our house guests, who will be arriving Thursday from Arkansas and Alabama, and also getting ready for the Trick-or-Treaters tonight. I was so, so brave yesterday. Not only did I go outside, I went to bloody, frelling Target. Because the little bratlings must have candy, though I rather like my idea of handing out tiny packets of salt and black pepper, ketchup and mustard and whatever else we could scarf up for free at fast-food places. I mean, condiments are sort of like candy. Sort of. Alas, Spooky said no, so we went to Target. And I did not scream, though the combo Pizza Hut/Starbuck's was almost more than my mind could endure. Oh, and we carved pumpkins yesterday. There are some photos (behind the cut) of this year's jack-o-lanterns. In the photo of the two together, I carved the uppermost one:

( Pumpkolanternia )

Some good thoughts regarding Joey Lafaye yesterday, which is to say that I'm working on the novel, even if I'm not quite working on it at the keyboard yet...

Tonight, if you are so inclined, you are invited to join me in the Second Life steampunk milleau of New Babbage for a Samhain bonfire behind the Abney Park Laboratory. The Professor will be making a brief appearance, just long enough for the ceremony, as she has been busy elsewhere recently...on an extended cuttlefishing expedition. Well, that's the cover story, should anyone ask. I do not have a hard-and-fast time for the event, but the bonfire will be sometime between 9:30 and 10:30 EDT, probably. I may post an update later with a more precise time. As for how to find Abney Park, if you teleport into Babbage Square, the good Professor's laboratory is the first building east of the train depot. I'm trying to decide whether or not I can get away with doing it "virtually" skyclad. Sheesh, last year I celebrated Samhain in the woods around a real bonfire, getting real bug bites in unmentionable places because I was not merely virtually skyclad. The invitation came again this year (thank you, once more), but there was just too much going on to get away. Here's a quote regarding my experience last year which I came across this morning, a response to a question as to why I found working skyclad so liberating:

To put it as simply as I can, I suspect that the reason I found the experience so very positive arose mainly from the knowledge that I stood there before the whole universe, that vast and largely unfathomable cosmos, and nothing stood between me and it. No clothing, no walls, no rooftops. The star-dabbed wheel of the sky, the brilliant waxing quarter moon, our chants, the cold air, the crackle and smoky smell of the bonfire, the knowledge that I stood as all creatures throughout all galaxies have ever stood, naked in every sense, in every way, as perfectly devoid of barriers as I am presently able to be. There was a grand giddiness, an ecstasy. For me, ecstasy is at the heart of Neo-paganism. Ecstasy and celebration and communion, and Saturday night was my most...what word, what word...my most complete experience of all three to date.

Yep.

One of the weird emails from Monday morning was someone wanting me to grant them a "free option" to adapt "Bela's Plot" to the screen. I dutifully passed the request along to my lit agent, Merrilee, and my film agent, Julien, though I knew the default answer to all "free option" inquiries is a polite "no." Here's the deal: If you can scrape up the money to make a film, even an ultra low-budget one, you can also scrape up the cash to pay the author some pittance upfront for your use of the source material.

I'd still love to hear more thoughts on Sirenia Digest #23. My thanks to setsuled for this bit yesterday:

Both stories seem concerned with unspoken communion. I was reminded of the Japanese aesthetic concept of Yugen, the idea that certain concepts or emotions can only be transmitted without words. Obviously the "voiceless communion a hundred million years older even than the coming of mankind" in "The Bed of Appetite" would remind me of yugen, but it's also in the mysterious objects left by the ghosts in "The Madam of the Narrow Houses," and the peculiar explanation the ghost offers for the protagonist's state of health.

Both stories deal with characters unmoved or irritated by false affections; the character in the first story is contrasted with the people who don't really care for their own children, yet nonetheless wonder why she doesn't marry. A character is described in the second story as never casually handing out praise. Both characters seem to seek transcending the false world by strange avenues. That the second story is concerned with art is significant, as is the fact one character insists that he doesn't attempt to find a publisher for his writing because he writes for himself. One might say the purpose of art is to find means of expressing what's otherwise inexpressible.

Okay. The year is turning, and there's mischief to be made. Come on, platypus. Let's get to it...

Postscript (5:44 p.m. EST): My modest Second Life Samhain ceremony in New Babbage will begin at 10:30 p.m. EST (which is 7:30 SLT/PST). Hope to see you there.

I was up until 3 a.m. (CaST) working on Sirenia Digest 11, and Franklin's interview with Vince came in this morning, and even as I type this long sentence, Gordon is busy PDFing the whole thing, so you should have it in your inboxes in only another hour or two. Again, my apologies for this issue coming so late. I will strive to do much better next month.

I think the most interesting part of working on this issue of the digest was reading over "Lafayette (Murder Ballad No. 2)" for the first time in five or six years and discovering that I still like the story a great deal. It still works. I'd pretty much forgotten all about Sticky and Harper. I did permit myself to make quite a few changes in the text, mostly grammatical stuff, so the version that appears in Sirenia Digest this month is a bit different from its original published form.

The table of contents for Subterranean Magazine #6 have been posted. It will include not only my new sf story "Zero Summer" (formerly "Night"), but also “Limerent” by Elizabeth Bear, “The Tenth Muse” by William Browning Spencer, and “The Long Dead Day” by Joe R. Lansdale. Good stuff. Order a copy ere they're all spoken for and gone.

Final Fantasy XII is released in the US today. Huzzah! I think Spooky's going to EB Games to pick up our copy as soon as she finishes carving pumpkins (which she's doing right now).

This morning, tagplazen posted some gorgeous photos of the exquisite glass undersea creatures created by Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka in the 19th-Century. Spooky and sovay and I were lucky enough to see many of these at the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology when we visited Cambridge back in August, along with the thousands of glass botanical replicas. Wonderful things.

This has turned out to be another rambly post. Ah, well. Curlicues and Golden Curves.

Last night, a reader asked if I would be comfortable talking about why I found working skyclad at Saturday night's Samhain celebration to be a wonderful experience. I said I'd think about it. And I have, and I suppose I am not uncomfortable saying just a little more (though it has occurred to me that perhaps I should set up a paganism/Wicca/magick filter for those who aren't interested in these things; for the moment, a cut should suffice).

( Samhain thoughts )

Spooky just brought in the first jack-o'-lantern for me to see. I need to wrap this up and get a bath. We're having Hannah and Jim and maybe Byron over this evening to help us dole out unhealthy treats to the neighborhood children. And TCM is showing Vincent Price movies all evening. Superb!