Caitlín R. Kiernan

I need to just stop making plans. I mean completely. I need to quit making plans altogether.

I should be in Boston right this very minute, with kylecassidy and Co., but I'm not. I'm home. Sitting in my stupid chair at this stupid fucking desk, typing on this stupid fucking keyboard. Because the car's acting fucking sketchy again (bad crankshaft). Kyle just called. He'll be meeting up with our Eva Canning this afternoon (as played by Sara Murphy)*, scouting locations and getting test shots for our sort of Secret Drowning Girl project. Oh, and Neil even went to the trouble to get us on the guest list for Amanda's show at the Mill tonight...but...no. I'm. Sitting. Here. Maybe I'll go back to bed and be done with it.

Tiddly pom.

Oh, and, here in Rhode Island, we're still having a wonderful March.

Anyway...yesterday, we had a very fine birthday for Spooky. I even made her the World's Most Strawberry Cake Ever. Maybe too strawberry. But it was appreciated. By Spooky, I mean. She spent most of the day playing American McGee's Alice: The Madness Continues, I think. There are photos below, behind the cut.

All the work part of my day yesterday was taken up getting material to jacobluest for the new Sirenia Digest website (which is looking amazing). I did that, but nothing much else. I did read a couple of stories in Supernatural Noir, Melanie Tem's "Little Shit" and Brian Evanson's "The Absent Eye." I played Rift. Selwyn made Level 50 and capped. Yes, this is the breathtaking excitement of my life. Maybe I just have everything backwards. Maybe it's a problem of perspective. In this Post-Modern Age, perhaps it is the digital experiences we ought to cheer as "genuine," and not those troublesome and inconvenient analog ones.

Looking at it all fucking backwards.

Here are the photos from yesterday:

( 24 June 201 )

And yeah, Peter Falk died. Which I think I'm just having trouble processing. Is that a computer analogy? Having trouble processing? If so, fuck it. Anyway, I grew up in the seventies, with Columbo, but I try not to think of Falk as that character, because too few people remember that he was a very good actor. For example, his role as "Der Filmstar" in Wim Wenders' Der Himmel über Berlin (1987). Here's a clip I love:

But on the brighter side, gay marriage is now legal in New York. So, we have New York, Massachusetts, and Connecticut. But I don't think it'll ever happen in Rhode Island. Too many goddamn Catholics.

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Last night, we watched a genuinely exquisitely creepy film, Brad Anderson's The Vanishing on 7th Street (2010). Anderson also made such superb films as Session 9 (2001), The Machinist (2004), Transsiberian (2008), and also directed ten episodes of Fringe. Right now, The Vanishing on 7th Street is streamable from Netflix, and you really, really ought to see it. Cosmic horror wonderfully translated to film. Man's fear of the dark and the dissolution of self. An apocalypse of darkness and aloneness. Beautiful.

And now I should go. Sit in the chair. At this desk. Maybe I'll try to write the introduction to Confessions of a Five-Chambered Heart (Subterranean Press, 2012), which will be called "Sexing the Weird." HPL and sex. My own refusal to be apologetic for the seemingly explicitly brutal nature of so much of my erotica, etc. One woman's pain is another's pleasures and affections.

* Turns out Sara hurt her arm at an audition at an audition, and I may have another chance to make it to Boston tomorrow. By the way, that came out wrong. Don't mean to imply I might benefit from Sara hurting her arm.

Here in Rhode Island, we're having a marvelous April.

So, I have long been an admirer of the awesomeness of coilhouse, but, of late, they've been dropping these "(trigger warning!)" PSAs into lots of their posts. What the fuck, guys? To start with, this is fucking Coilhouse, home of the weird, brash, and bold. And secondly, when the hell did sudden, unexpected emotional responses that resonate deeply because of traumatic personal experiences become a Bad Thing that one should be warned against? And – no shit – I say this as someone who's struggled with severe PTSD since before it was a goddamn acronym and who's still medicated for it. And yet, here I am, the personification of TRIGGERING, the very idea of TRIGGERING MADE FLESH. Has the concept of catharsis passed from the world? I can't help but suspect that coilhouse has bowed to the pressure of the Whiners. Butch up, people. There is no fucking shelter from the storm. Worse still, the storm has only just begun.

I will not be a member of the congregation of the Church of Protect Me From That Which Might Make Me Cry.

Yeah, another grumpy day.

But I have to get over it, because tomorrow is Spooky's birthday, and I think I'm going to be in Boston on Saturday evening...so...maybe the Good Fairies of Sunshine and Pink-Pony Cupcake Sprinkles will show up and pull some cheer forth from my ass in time to save the day.

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Yesterday was spent editing Confessions of a Five-Chambered Heart, answering email, sending email, waiting on email, and not much else. Today, I begin a vignette for Sirenia Digest #67. It's all in my head.

My thanks to oldfossil59 for making sure I got a copy of Publisher's Weekly 258/24, in which Two Worlds and In Between not only received a starred review, but appeared on the Table of Contents page as their "pick of the week." It really is amazing, holding that in my hands, seeing the final version of Lee Moyer's cover in color. So, thank you, oldfossil59.

So few people would ever guess that "Houses Under the Sea" was inspired by R.E.M.'s song "Belong." And that just goes to show you how useful expectations can be. "Oh, that story was inspired by Lovecraft!" Well, actually...

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Okay, here's another one to help me purge the angrification gremlins. If you're running a writer's conference at a well-respected liberal-arts college some 70 miles from my home (and that's as the crow flies, so it probably more like 125 miles), because you want me on ONE panel, then you're going to have to offer me a hell of a lot more than lunch and breakfast. Like an honorarium, and travel expenses, and a hotel room. Offer me those, and I might think about it. Maybe. It's nice to be asked, yes, but it's rude to put someone (a freelancer, at that) in the position of having to say no to what only seems like an honor, in a world where gas is edging towards four dollars a gallon. And ys, I appreciate the conference doesn't have a lot of money, but that's not my problem.

Hold on...be back in a second. Spooky is channeling her inner australopithicine. No, really. Monkey noises.

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Round 3 of the Big Damn eBay Auction has begun. Right here. Please bid if you are able and interested! Thankses, Precious.

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Last night, we made up for the lousy Hal Hartley film by watching Terrence Malick's impressive debut feature, Badlands (1973). Somehow, I'd never seen it before. Then there was Rift, and the blowback from the Big Patch, 1.3, which has loads of cool shit, but they messed up guild vaults, so we still don't have one, and all the talent trees were reset. Still, we managed a very good rp scene in the Spire of Orphiel. Later, Spooky read aloud from Junky, and then I read back over "The Maltese Unicorn," in Supernatural Noir. I really am exceptionally happy with this story, and thankful I was given a chance to write it. Now, I proceed to the other tales in the book!

Oh....here's something interesting at NPR: The End Of Gender?.

Ambiguously,
Aunt Beast

Wow. Hot as hell in the House, and I am not awake, even though I slept until eleven frakking thirty. I think the temperature inside the apartment reached 86F yesterday. Or maybe that was day before yesterday. I'm too hot to remember. It may be worse today.

And yes, today is Spooky's 4x10 birthday. She said I can call it that. Yes, I asked permission. Everyone better be good to her today.

Yesterday, I wrote a rather staggering 1,744 words in only five hours, and found THE END of "Tidal Forces." The ending is odd, at least for me. For one of my stories. And this has to be the strangest tale about Azathoth ever told. And I realized, about halfway through this story, it's the third time I've gone at the same story I first tried to tell with "The Bone's Prayer" (Sirenia Digest #39, February 2009; reprinted in The Best Dark Fantasy and Horror 2010; Prime Books; forthcoming), and then had another go at with "Sanderlings" (the chapbook that accompanies the limited edition of The Ammonite Violin). With "Sanderlings," it took me several months to realize I'd rewritten "The Bone's Prayer." This time, writing "Tidal Forces," I realized a couple of days in. I honestly have no idea why I've done this. I don't think the story's get progressively better. It must just be something I've been trying to get out of my system, like Angela Carter retelling "Little Red Riding Hood" over and over again.

Got the editorial letter for "The Maltese Unicorn" this morning, but I'm going to set that aside until after the Great Old Spooky One's birthday.

Speaking of which...in recognition of her 4x10 birthday, Spooky is having a sale on all the paintings in her Dreaming Squid Dollworks Etsy shop until midnight tonight (EDT). Take heed and tremble.

Have I mentioned I now command a battalion of mothmen? No? I suppose it slipped my mind. I figure a battalion of mothmen at my fingertips ought to give me some sort of damn advantage (though I've yet to figure out exactly what that might be).

And suddenly, here it is, my 2,500th LiveJournal entry. I was relatively late coming to LJ. I began an account here April 15th, 2004, intending it only as a mirror for my Blogger account. And that's what it was for a while. But, for one reason or another, I eventually switched over to LJ exclusively. I'm not even going to try to "guesstimate" how many words I've written on LJ over the past six years. An awful lot. And if you go back and add in the Blogger entries, which began on November 24th, 2001...well, it's a lot of words, and spans the better part of my career as a writer. On November 24th, 2011, I'll have been blogging for an entire decade, which seems almost impossible.

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I'm utterly overwhelmed at the response to yesterday's "Spooky Birthday Present Fund" proposal. I'd thought that we might get fifteen donations by late June. As of this morning, we have twenty five. About an hour ago, I took down the PayPal button, and we started turning people away. This means that I'll be producing twenty-five copies of the new poem, instead of fifteen copies. My great thanks to everyone who's taking part in this (including the people we turned away). You guys are unbelievable. While most donors were in the US, we also have people in Canada, England, and Australia. Now, of course, I have to write a very good poem. So, yeah, wow and thank you. We have all your snail-mail addresses, and the signed and numbered copies of the poem will be mailed out late in June.

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Today, I'm going to begin writing "Tempest Witch," my Frazetta tribute, which will be appearing in Sirenia Digest #54 later this month. As soon as this piece is done, and as soon as I've read A House is Not a Home, I'll be beginning work on "The Maltese Unicorn."

I'd like to remind you that, although the limited edition is sold out, there are still copies of the trade hardcover of The Ammonite Violin & Others available from Subterranean Press.

There was a mild seizure yesterday evening, which took me by surprise, as I've not had one in...well, at least a month.

Night before last, we finally saw Werner Herzog's Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call: New Orleans. It's a brilliant film, despite having two sets of colons in the title.

Yes, it's true. Today is Spooky's birthday!

And she'll just have to make do with the French-maid outfit this year, because the naughty-nurse outfit is in the dirty laundry (not inappropriately).

Um...yeah.

Yesterday, I wrote a very decent 1,551 words on "The Sea Troll's Daughter," which is coming out sort of vaguely like a quasi-feminist Beowulf. I hope this will be a good thing. Last night, Vince sent me the rough sketch for "The Mermaid of the Concrete Ocean" (to appear in Sirenia Digest #43). There's always a rough sketch, before the final version, so I can see what he has in mind. Here's this month's (behind the cut):

( The Mermaid of the Concrete Ocean )

Here in Providence, we're trying to decide if it's King's The Mist or McCarthy's The Road. It has become apparent that, in order to determine which, we'll have to sally forth and see whether we have roving gangs of cannibals or alien bug monsters. Still grey, cloudy, rainy, chilly. No sun in the sky anymore.

So, for those watching the current eBay auctions, please note that The Merewife hardback auction will be ending tomorrow. My thanks to everyone who's bid thus far.

And micro-excerpt #4 from The Red Tree will be posted very soon at greygirlbeast. If we can just add 15 followers a day, I'll have a thousand by the time to book is released on August 4th. Promotion!*

And now, the platypus (and the coffee, and the birthday girl) calls.

* First person who names what the play (and its author) being referenced in today's micro-excerpt wins a mention in the blog tomorrow.