Caitlín R. Kiernan

Yesterday was a day off, as predicted. It was not the best sort of day off. I was too tired to leave the House. I helped Spooky clean the place a little. I started a painting I've been meaning to start since May. I read a little. There was a nap before dinner. After dinner, I went back to WoW and played my night-elf warrior, Mithwen, who has sat neglected since November 2008, when I abandoned her for my blood-elf warlock, Shaharrazad. Anyway...it was a day.

It would only have been a day, had Spooky's laptop not decided to go belly up. Again. Once again, it's probably the motherboard. She's taking it in for repairs today. Fortunately, it's still under warranty. But she'll be without it for a couple of weeks, which is going to make it harder to deal with eBay and various other necessary things. So it goes. She's stuck on my ancient, but dependable, iBook until her laptop comes back.

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I wanted to put down some notes addressing John Glover's concerns, posted yesterday, that the "Best of CRK" volume would neglect older tales in favor of new ones. It is a concern that gets to the heart of why putting together the table of contents is proving so difficult for me (though there are other factors, as you'll soon see, that also make it very hard).

Yes, it's true. It's very hard for me to read the older stories (certainly those pre-2000). This is normal. Authors grow. Change. Our voices change, as do our likes and dislikes, etc. But, so far, a good portion of the ToC is comprised of stories written between 1995 and 1999, stories from Tales of Pain and Wonder, From Weird and Distant Shores, and Wrong Things. So, they certainly won't be left out. It helps, too, that very few stories written after 2005 will be included, as those are being reserved for future collections. So, this is mostly Tales of Pain and Wonder through To Charles Fort, With Love and Alabaster. Mostly. There will be very little material from Sirenia Digest, for example. Which helps me to avoid giving the older stories the cold shoulder.

Of course, nothing from the novels written during that time will be included. And none of my comics work (the latter for legal reasons, as all my work for DC/Vertigo was "work for hire," and I don't own it, so have no reprint rights. And getting those rights would be prohibitively expensive and time consuming.). This is a "best of short fiction" volume.

But the question of what goes in and what doesn't is more complex than making sure the book represents the full range of my work during this initial eleven-year chunk of my career ('94-'05). The biggest problem I have is in defining the term best. Are we talking about my personal favorites? Reader favorites? Those stories that have been chosen by editors for annual "best of" anthologies? The stories that have won awards? The stories that were only nominated for awards? The stories that have been singled out by reviewers and received the most praise? Stories that mark a sudden stylistic or thematic shift? The stories that have most often been reprinted?

What does best mean in this context? Truthfully, there's no correct answer to that question. All answers must be subjective, relative to one perspective or another. I'm weighing all of these factors (and probably a few more) in choosing the stories.

So, that should offer some insight into how I'm going about this process. When I was offered the chance to do the book, I think my reaction was, "Wow. This will be so easy!" But it's not even remotely simple.

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It's 12:49 p.m., and I'm still not awake. Mothmen, get the oxygen tank!

Postscript: I just heard from Bill Schafer at Subterranean Press that The Ammonite Violin & Others is down to the last 82 copies. That's only 82 remaining out of 1,800 copies. So, if you want to snag one, you'd better do it very soon.

A thunderstorm is moving in, and the sky has gone marvelously dark above Federal Hill here in Providence.

I have what I think is quite a momentous announcement. This morning William Schafer at Subterranean Press emailed to ask if I'd "be interested in a 200k word The Best of Caitlín R. Kiernan, that, in addition to 5-6 uncollected stories, drew from all of your published collections..."

And, of course, I said yes. I said yes immediately.

So...over the next month or so I'll be compiling the table of contents, which, frankly, seems like an almost impossible task, even with a two-hundred-thousand word limit. I have to go back over all the short fiction I've written the last seventeen years, almost two hundred stories, and figure out which pieces I consider my best (as well as which pieces have received the most attention, and so might be said to represent my "best" work). The book will be released sometime in the spring of 2011, and the limited edition will be accompanied by The Crimson Alphabet as a free chapbook. I will post more details as they become available. By the way, feel free to post suggestions here, or email them to me, your personal favorites you might like to see included. I'll consider those, too, when making my choices. I hope to deliver the manuscript to subpress by the end of the summer.

So, yeah. Big News. Also, I'll be getting back to work on The Dinosaurs of Mars next year, after having set it aside in the summer of 2007. If all goes well, subpress will release it in the fall of 2011. Which means I'm doing two books with them next year.

Meanwhile, my copies of The Ammonite Violin & Others arrived late yesterday, along with the "Sanderlings" chapbook. I am beyond pleased with how the collection turned out. It's definitely one of the best-looking books I've ever done with subpress. And if you preordered and do not yet have your copy, it should be along shortly.

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Today, I did 1,060 words on Chapter One of the Next New Novel, and it's the first writing I've gotten done since Sunday. The less said about the first half of yesterday the better. Most of it was spent at the Peace Dale Public Library, reading Joshi's The Rise and Fall of the Cthulhu Mythos.

Sunday evening, we returned to the Blackstone River Gorge area in southern Massachusetts, the towns of Blackstone and Millville, and almost to Uxbridge. I found more locations important to the Next New Novel, and fell more in love with the region. Many photos were taken, and I'll try to post some soon.

Please have a look at the current eBay auctions. Also, there's the cool stuff at Spooky's Dreaming Squid Dollworks & Sundries shop at Etsy (she says, "Tell them to please buy this stuff, because I'm tired of looking at it."). Yes, she really said that. So, thanks. Buy or bid if you are able.

Okay. That's all for now. I have a table of contents to ponder....

Last night, I learned that The Ammonite Violin & Others has made the cover of Publishers Weekly (Volume 257 Issue 27 07/12/2010). It should go without saying that I am quite entirely pleased and somewhat gobsmacked. Here's the cover (the largest image I could find):



You can read the cover story here. And there's also a nice profile of Subterranean Press in the same issue, which you can read here.

Sadly, not only do I not have a subscription to Publishers Weekly, we spent part of the morning calling bookshops in Providence and Warwick, including the Brown University Bookstore, and were unable to find anyone who carries it. So, if some kind reader could please send me a copy, I would obviously be very, very grateful:

P.O. Box 603096
Providence, RI 02906

I need to let Rick Kirk know...

My last entry before Readercon 21.

The past two days have been hell here in Providence. The temperature hit 101F on Tuesday (a record for the date), and wasn't much better yesterday. We've had to stay out of the House as much as possible, trying to stay cool. It is an old house, this House, and it is made to hold in heat in cold winters. It also holds it in during summers. Which is usually okay, unless we get these heatwaves. Dr. Muñoz could not even begin to keep up. Yesterday, it was 93F in the cool part of the House for much of the day. But last night the fever broke, and we have a reprieve until sometime next week, when the heat is supposed to return. At least we get three nights of AC at the hotel.

Here's an update regarding The Ammonite Violin & Others: The book came back from the printer, but there was a problem with the dust jackets, so subpress had to send the books back to the printer to have the dust jackets redone. This has created a delay in shipment of the books to those who've preordered them. This part is fairly straightforward and has not caused me to gnash my teeth. However, Amazon.com, in it's infinite lack of wisdom, sent out email to those who preordered via Amazon, stating that the book was "out of stock," and asking people if they wished to cancel their orders. Apparently, from what I've been told (and my information may be in error), Amazon will cancel the preorder unless you reply to this email, telling them not to do so. None of it makes much sense to me. The books have not shipped from the publisher, so there's no way they can be "out of stock" at Amazon, given they've not yet been in stock at Amazon. Also, I heard a rumor the book was sold out, and that's not true, either. Only the limited edition is sold out (and it has been for months). As to when you can expect to get your copy, Bill at subpress says, "Ammonite should be done next Monday or Tuesday, when they've been rejacketed."

So. Apologies for the delay, but the books should go out in another couple of weeks, I'd think (regardless of what Amazon might say to the contrary). This is one reason it's always a good thing to order directly from subpress.

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The heat has been so bad I didn't even make the hair appointment on Tuesday, so everyone who makes Readercon will be blessed with the sight of my shaggy greying mop. Maybe this will spur me to just let it grow out, and accept the grey. Which is something I should have done years ago.

My thanks to Geoffrey (readingthedark), who made the drive down from Framingham on Monday evening. It was good to have company and conversation.

Tuesday, trying to escape the heat, we headed for the theater. We took in two matinées. First, M. Night Shyamalan's The Last Airbender and then Lee Unkrich's Toy Story 3. The latter is probably one of the best films of the summer. The former, alas, is not. But it also wasn't even half as awful as most of the critics are making it out to be. The plot was not "incomprehensible," for example. The plot was very simple and straightforward. The Last Airbender is a painfully mediocre movie, that's true, and I do not expect painfully mediocre movies from Shyamalan. I know this cuts against the grain, how it's been cool to hate Shyamalan since...I don't know...since at least Signals, but I have adored all of his films except the also painfully mediocre The Happening (2008). As for The Last Airbender, I thought it was a gorgeous film, and, as a children's film, it worked in a sloppy sort of way. I even enjoyed the last third quite a bit. But yeah, the acting was consistently stiff and heavy-handed (even with people like Cliff Curtis, who I know can act), which likely means the direction was off. The screenplay was flat and unremarkable. As for the charges that the casting is racist, again, I don't see a problem of the magnitude reviewers have indicated. I noticed only three white actors cast in roles that seemed to require non-white actors (admittedly, two of these were main characters): Nicola Peltz (Katara), Jackson Rathbone (Sokka), and Katharine Houghton (Katara's grandmother). How you get three Caucasians in a village full of people who seem to be Inuit, I don't know. Yes, the roles were inexplicably miscast, but when almost everyone else in the film isn't white, I hardly see how this qualifies as a massive "racefail" (gods, I hate that silly compounderation). The Last Airbender isn't a particularly good film, and it's a strange move for Shyamalan, who I would think would be trying to get back on track with the sorts of film's he does best. But it's also not nearly as bad as I'd expected it to be. Then again, I never cared for the animated series. Maybe my reaction would have been different if I were a fan.

Also, can we all please stop with the idiotic 3-D soon?

I'd say more, but it's beginning to get hot in the office, so I'm going to wrap this up. Perhaps I'll see you this weekend at Readercon. Perhaps I won't. No, I won't be twatting from the con. I will be unplugged. Next entry, Monday morning.

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).

Yesterday is a vicious blur of words. I did another 1,113 words on "The Maltese Unicorn." I'd hoped I'd be finished by Friday. I'm going to Boston on Sunday (the long-delayed birthday dinner), and I very much wanted to put this puppy to bed beforehand. I fear, however, I won't be finishing until maybe Tuesday. I've already spent twelve days on this story, not counting all the research I did back in May. It is becoming a vast and moody thing, this tale.

My thanks to everyone who bid in the most recent round of eBay auctions. New auctions will begin very soon, maybe as early as this afternoon.

My author's copies of The Ammonite Violin & Others should be along any day now. If you've not yet ordered a copy, I hope you'll do so.

What else to yesterday? It was such a long stretch of writing (as was Monday), I wasn't up for much when it was over. I signed contracts for a reprint of "The Bone's Prayer." I proofed the galleys for the author's note section of the forthcoming The Red Tree mass-market paperback.

I read a paper in the new JVP, "A new basal hadrosauroid (Dinosauria, Ornithopoda) from the Turonian of New Mexico." After dinner, Spooky and I watched an episode from Season Five of Deadliest Catch (because I'm a crab-fishing nerd), and then she trimmed my hair, which was very badly in need of a trim. Then we played four hours of WoW, and Gnomenclature and Klausgnomi both reached Level 26. I think when they reach 30, we'll be switching back to our blood elves, Shaharrazad and Suraa, to finish up Lich King. Then we'll likely spend the summer on our space goats...um, I mean our Draenei...before switching back to our blood elves in the autumn. It's good to have these things planned out, I think. Later, when I tried to go to sleep, all I could think about was work, and I had my first bout of insomnia in a couple weeks. I finally had to take an Ambien, which i am increasingly loathe to do. I read Patton Oswalt and Patric Reynolds' Serenity: Float Out, a nice one-off from Dark Horse. And finally, about four, I got to sleep (only to be awakened before ten by construction noise).

Last night, someone wrote to thank me for my part in the documentary Lovecraft: Fear of the Unknown (2008). But he also brought up the fact that I was the only woman interviewed in the film, and the way that, in general, women are scarce when it comes to Lovecraft criticism and Lovecraftian anthologies. There's no way to not agree with this. The problem is readily apparent, and, in fact, I was a little uncomfortable watching the final cut of the documentary, the absence of female commentators is so conspicuous. This is one reason I was very pleased with ellen_datlow's Lovecraft Unbound. There are stories by twenty-two authors, and eight of the authors are female, which is far more than average for an anthology of Lovecraft-inspired stories. Consider, The Song of Cthulhu (Chaosium, 2001): twenty authors, one woman (me). Or Weird Shadows Over Innsmouth (Fedogan and Bremer, 2005): twelve authors, only one woman (me). Or The Children of Cthulhu (Del Rey, 2002): twenty-three authors, three women (including me). Or Cthulhu 2000 (Arkham House, 2000): eighteen authors, but only three are women. Or Black Wings: Tales of Lovecratian Horror (PS Publishing, 2010): twenty-one authors, two women (myself included). I could go on, but I'll wait until another time. This is a very complex subject, and one I should return to some day when I can do it justice. However, yes, I do see a definite gender bias at work here.

The platypus is eager, so...I should get to it.

Another sunny day in Providence, but the temperature's only 73F. It'll be cooler than yesterday. The window's open, and I can smell a hint of the sea.

Yesterday, I wrote 1,140 words on "The Maltese Unicorn." I'm very nervous about this one, because, in numerous ways, it's something I haven't done before. Spooky says it's coming along nicely, and she's usually right. I think my main concern right now is length. I realized yesterday that I'd plotted something that could very easily be a novella, and that I'm going to have to work to stay within my word limit. Which is sort of like editing a film, deciding what winds up on the "cutting-room floor" and what goes into that final cut that people get to see. Yesterday, I kept having to snip out pieces of dialogue, not because they were bad. They were, in fact, rather good (if I do say so myself, and I did). Dialogue may end up being one of the best things about this story.

This would be a very, very good day to preorder your copy of The Ammonite Violin & Others. So far, it's gotten nothing but rave reviews, which is a huge relief.

I'd very much like to go to the sea today— to the sound of the waves, the gulls, the wind, the peace —but it's Memorial day, and the beaches will be crawling with noisy, drunken tourists celebrating nothing in particular except a day off and legal alcohol. So...maybe later in the week.

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A quick, but important, note to readers, and I do wish it were not necessary to write this. I understand that by keeping this journal, and being on Facebook and Twitter, I am "putting myself out there." In this age, many artists are more accessible than at any other time in history, yes. However, that doesn't mean there are not still boundaries, or that the boundaries don't vary between one artist and another, or that you've been given full access to their lives. In this case, my life. I love getting email from readers, and comments to the journal, and responses on Facebook and Twitter, and I often reply. However, some people do not seem to grasp the necessity of boundaries, or the rights to privacy that I still claim. I'm speaking to a very small minority here. As in, if you've sent me a dozen emails in the past month, please don't write me a thirteenth sounding all hangdog because I've only answered one or two. Do not expect me to hold your hand as you read my books and stories. Do not think that my having "friended" you on Facebook or LJ means we're, you know, actual real-life friends. Do not expect me to follow you on Twitter. I should think these things would be common sense, but a few rather vocal people don't seem to get it. So, please, think before asking more of me than I freely give. And sure, it might only take me a second or two to reply to any given question or request, but those seconds add up. And, more importantly, I simply may not feel like replying, and there's nothing wrong with my feeling that way.

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Last night I was too tired from all the writing to read. Well, except for a paper in the latest Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, "A new baenid turtle from the Upper Cretaceous (Maastrichtian) Hell Creek Formation of North Dakota and preliminary taxonomic review of the Cretaceous Baenidae." The new taxon is named Gamerabaena, and the authors note, under etymology, "'Gamera refers to the fictional, firebreathing turtle from the 1965 movie Gamera, in allusion to his fire-breathing capabilities and the Hell Creek Formation..."

Spooky's birthday present, a PS3— made possible by donations from incredibly, marvelously generous readers —arrived early. We ordered it early, to be sure it arrived on time, and it arrived much sooner than expected. So, we've been downloading demos, and I've been playing Heavenly Sword (2007). I gotta say, Heavenly Sword is, hands down, the most beautiful videogame I've ever seen. I think it actually manages to beat Shadow of the Colossus (2005). And it doesn't hurt in the least that you get Andy Serkis and Anna Torv. Later in the evening, we went on something of a WoW binge, which I've not done in a while. We got Gnomnclature and Klausgnomi to Level 19. Soon now, they'll not have to run everywhere they go.

Anyway...time to make the words.

Running late today. The dreams are getting bad again, and that may be one or another of the new meds, and it may not be. But at least there's no dreamsickness. They fade almost as soon as I'm awake, and there's only the sense of an interrupted reality, replaced by this reality, which is no more or less convincing than those lost realities. A sunny, warm day here in Providence. I almost wrote "morning," then realized that it's already after noon.

There's a really marvelous review of The Ammonite Violin & Others in the new Booklist (review by Regina Schroeder):

Kiernan’s stories clearly descend from archetypal tales, though she adds a depth and a clarity of vision all her own. From “The Ammonite Violin,” in which a collector achieves the pinnacle of his obsession, and a musician discovers the true power of her craft, to the story of a girl who loves the rat king and holds in her care the whistle the rats used to create the world, her stories give us a side of timeless scenarios that have usually been left unspoken. There are always costs to being a part of these stories, and they aren’t always gladly paid by those peripheral to the heroes, as the narrators often are. In “For One Who Has Lost Herself,” the price is the awful truth that comes after the end of a story we already pretty much knew; that is, what happens to the selkie after the young man who stole her sealskin has vanished. Brilliantly crafted, tightly woven, and memorable, the worlds of Kiernan’s imagination are odd places, quite fascinating to poke around in.

I feel like, with The Red Tree, Sirenia Digest, A is for Alien, and now The Ammonite Violin & Others, I'm finally getting close to what I've been trying to do since the start. After so much frustration and so many wrong turns, I'm finally telling the stories I need to tell, the way that I need to tell them. The language is finally working for me. I don't know if I'll still feel this way in five or ten years, looking back. But that's how it feels right now.

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Yesterday, we left Providence and spent the day on Conanicut Island, at Beavertail. The day was dazzling, brilliant, the blue sky hung with just enough clouds so as not to be disconcerting. We parked on the western side of the point, which we've not explored as well as the eastern side. Largely, this is because the eastern side is sheltered from the wind, and even on warm days, the wind off Narragansett Bay can be uncomfortably cold. Yesterday, we didn't let that dissuade us. We climbed over the craggy outcrops of Cambro-Ordovician age Fort Burnside Formation and Jamestown Formation, crazily tilted beds of phyllite and slate and siltstone and stark white veins of calcite. We started about a quarter mile northwest of the lighthouse, and worked our way southeast. The tide was out, and so we could reach some of the pebbly beaches. We spent a couple of hours searching for sea glass while the cormorants and gulls wheeled overhead and the bell buoy clanged. I've been feeling bad about never using the Canon PowerShot A75, so I'd brought it along. I've decided that this summer I'll use it, while Spooky uses the newer Powershot A1100IS. So I took photos yesterday with the older camera. We sat and watched the sea. The wind had a bite, especially when the sun would slip behind the clouds. Still, we sat and listened to the sea. There were rabbits and red-winged blackbirds and the dog roses have begun to bloom, pink and white. We saw the ospreys nesting just north of Great Creek.

Here are my photos from yesterday. I'll post some of Spooky's tomorrow:

( 16 May 2010 )

Last night, we finished reading Patti Smith's Just Kids, which, if you don't know, focuses on her relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe. I read the entire book aloud to Kathryn. And I've been dreading the ending, and had promised my self I'd get through it without crying. It was a stupid promise. It seemed like it took me an hour to read the last few pages, and we were both crying. But it's a beautiful, beautiful book. And later this week, we'll be seeing Black White + Gray: A Portrait of Sam Wagstaff and Robert Mapplethorpe at the RISD museum.

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I'm going to try to get Sirenia Digest #54 out sometime in the next couple of days, early, so that I can focus all my attention on starting "The Maltese Unicorn."

Yesterday, Bill Schafer at Subterranean Press passed along the news that the limited edition of The Ammonite Violin & Others has sold out. There are still copies of the trade hardcover, for now. But I expect the book to sell out prior to publication, so you might want to preorder. My thanks to all who have preordered so far. I'm very excited about this book, as it contains some of my best work to date.

Here in Providence, we're having a wonderful day of thunderstorms and dark skies. The thunder woke me at 10:30 this morning, but I dozed off for another hour, only to be awakened by the thunder a second time.

Yesterday, I dithered and searched for story. And a very strange thing happened. As the day progressed, "The Maltese Unicorn" began to metamorphose from joke to viable story concept. Some of it was a number of interesting comments to yesterday's blog entry. Some of it was just my brain working a problem. By six p.m. or so, it had blossomed into a full-fledged, slightly tongue-in-cheek story involving the aphrodisiac qualities that might be derived from a unicorn's horn, two rival demon brothel's in 1940s Manhattan, an unscrupulous dealer in occult antiquities named Nathaniel Adler (wink, wink), and...well, lots of other stuff. I was sort of excited and appalled, all at once. I emailed the book's editor and ran the story idea past her, fully expecting to be told that I was right to have wanted to punch myself in the face for having thought it up. Instead, I was encouraged to have a go at it...so...I suppose I shall. The next couple of weeks will be weird, indeed.

Spooky has begun a new round of eBay auctions.

Last night, we watched Disney's The Little Mermaid, which I'd not seen in just about forever. It holds up well. It got me to thinking about the first time I saw it, late in 1989, at a midnight showing in Birmingham. Elizabeth was there, and Jada, and another friend, Annie, who was outraged at the happy ending. Annie went on and on..and on...and on...about how Disney had butchered Hans Christian Andersen's story. That night, her annoyance at the retelling amused me (we were stoned), but years later I was thinking of Annie when I wrote "Tears Seven Times Salt" (in 1995), and then, again, when I wrote issue #33 of The Dreaming, "Dream Below" (sometime late in 1998). But I expect I'd not thought about that night at the movies, that night when I was only twenty-five years old, in more than a decade.

Last night, after the movie, we read more of Patti Smith's Just Kids. I had a moment of gleeful, triumphant grammar nerdiness when I came to a passage where Smith speaks of a microphone as a mike. This is, of course, the correct spelling, though many people today insist upon the atrocious misspelling mic. Which is exactly like misspelling bike as bic, or trike as tric.

Thanks for the many comments yesterday. It's always good to be reminded I'm not just talking to myself.

Anyway, here's hoping today will be productive...

Sunny, but chilly here in Providence. At the moment, it's 64F, with a north wind at 17mph, gusting to 25mph. Rain is on it's way, and another dose of cold air.

It's looking like it may be another day or three before I'll be able to make the promised announcement concerning The Red Tree. Perhaps tomorrow morning. Savor the anticipation. And no, it's not news of a film adaptation.

Yesterday, I typed up all the corrections to the galley pages of the mass-market paperback of The Red Tree, and revised the acknowledgments in the "Author's Note." And sent it all off to Penguin. And I let the subpress design person know which author's photo to use for the dust jacket of The Ammonite Violin & Others. There wasn't much more than that, so far as work is concerned.

We left the House sometime around 2:30 p.m., heading for Moonstone Beach. We'd not been since the autumn. We drove through Wakefield, to window shop at Pow! Science! There was a FEMA trailer set up in the parking lot of the Wakefield Mall. There are reminders of the flood everywhere as you head into South County. Flooded pastures and houses. Matunuck Schoolhouse Road is still closed. I think we made it to Moonstone about four. The sun was amazingly bright, and the air as clear as I've ever seen it. The blue-grey silhouette of Block Island stood out on the southern horizon, ten miles across the sound. The sand was littered with the tiny corpses of dead lady bugs. We tried to look for beach glass, but there was a bitterly cold wind blowing off the sea, and I'd not had the good sense to dress for the cold (it was a comfortable 65F back in Providence).

We didn't stay long on the beach, though we lingered a bit behind the dunes. I sat on the bridge over the culvert connecting Trustom and Card ponds, and listened to doves and gulls, blackbirds and ducks and crows. On the road, Spooky found what appears to be part of a fossilized bone, from some sort of mammal. I scooped up all the fragments and brought them home. I suspect they came from Pleistocene-aged glacial till that was used to pave the road. Anyway, after Moonstone, we headed father west, to Charlestown Beach. The wind wasn't quite as bad there, but it was still too cold to stay very long. Giving up on the beaches, we drove back east to Narragansett and had dinner at our favorite clam shack/chowder house, Iggy's. I think we made it home about seven or seven-thirty p.m.

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Last night, we watched Pearry Reginald Teo's The Gene Generation (2007; based on Dennis Greenhill's graphic novel, The DNA Hacker Chronicles). It wasn't a good film, but it was almost not a bad film. There was promise, but the absence of a decent script and better production values held it back. Among the pluses, Ronan Harris (VNV Nation) and a number of other futurepop folks were responsible for the music. Also, there was Bai Ling, and tentacles, and lots of Gigeresque set design...so at least there was eye candy, even if the "story" was a mess. It felt a bit like someone had spliced together all the cut scenes from a videogame. And yet, it did keep our interest for 96 minutes.

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There are a dozen photos from yesterday...

( 14 April 2010 )