Caitlín R. Kiernan

There were plans for yesterday, a long road trip and "field work" for Joey Lafaye, but the weather turned shitty, and it's still shitty today. There was rain yesterday and last night, something that has become almost mythical here in Atlanta. A cold, stinging rain, and if it did that for a couple of months, it might save us from the Great Water Riot of 2008. Or not. Oh, and I was up way the hell too late on Friday night, until something like 4:30 ayem, and that also messed with my plans for yesterday. No rain today, just cold and grey.

Instead, I stayed in and began proofreading the galleys for Tails of Tales of Pain and Wonder. Spooky and I spent a couple of hours writing out a sort of prospectus for "The Crimson Alphabet," parts one and two. We have a least one word for each letter at this point. Several people said they wanted to see me do "The Crimson Alphabet," and no one said they didn't, so I interpreted that as a vote of confidence. Oh, and I managed to combine three boxes of paperbacks (Silk, Low Red Moon, and Beowulf) into only two boxes. They'll go to storage in Birmingham now. I washed my hair. That was the work I did yesterday instead of the work that I should have been doing yesterday. Oh, and I got a $10.56 royalty check, for "Bela's Plot" in Love in Vein II. Over the years, only a tiny handful of the 100+ short stories I've sold have actually earned royalties, and "Bela's Plot" is one of them.

Last night, we had dinner with Byron at the Vortex, then came back here and watched Badder Santa, which I must confess I loved. Quite a lot of films lately, and I can't recall if I've mentioned them all. Friday night, Spooky and I saw Daywatch (Dnevnoy dozor, 2006), which was beautiful and superbly dreamlike, but which didn't make much more sense to me from a narrative standpoint than did it's predecessor, Nightwatch (Nochnoy dozor, 2004). I think it's something about fundamental conventions of Russian filmmaking and/or storytelling that I fail to grasp. Which is to say, the problem is probably with me, not the films.

The latest round of eBay auctions continue, and please note that the auction for Letter X of Tales from the Woeful Platypus (complete with hand-sewn paisley platypus) ends tomorrow. I think Spooky's going to be listing a couple of new things today.

I learned on Friday that, in light of my recent health problems, my editor at NAL — Anne Sowards — has agreed to extend my due date on Joey Lafaye to June. Which is a huge relief.

Here we are, approaching the long cold death before the year is reborn, and so I must remind you of Cephalopodmas, which falls on December 22nd.

One last thing: Clarkesworld is doing a "favorite story of the year" poll, and if you happened to really love "The Ape's Wife," please take a moment to tick that particular box and let it be known. Thank you.

Here it is already Halloween the first once again. And I think that I shall celebrate by having a Very Good Day, even though I had to take two Ambien last night to jumpstart sleep, and then there were nightmares I cannot quite forget, and I only slept six and a half hours, and am still not truly awake.

Yesterday, I proofed all of Sirenia Digest #22 again, then did the layout, and by the time I sent the file away to thingunderthest to be PDFed, it must have been six o'clock in the pee-em. I am very pleased with this issue, and I hope others are as well. Comments welcome, of course. Don't be shy. The platypus is a curious being. So am I. Oh, and if you are a subscriber and have not yet received your copy of #22, just email Spooky at crk_books(at)yahoo(dot)com and she'll make it right.

Also, I might draw your attention to Last Drink Bird Head, edited by Jeff and Ann Vandermeer, to be released late in 2008. I did a piece for it (linking "The Road of Pins" and "Houses Under the Sea"), as did many other people, including Michael Bishop, Gene Wolfe, Tanith Lee, Peter Straub, Stephen R. Donaldson, Michael Swanwick, Henry Kaiser, Bruce Holland Rogers, Conrad Williams, Daniel Abraham, Ellen Kushner, Holly Phillips, Jay Lake, K.J. Bishop, Jon Courtney Grimwood, Sonya Taaffe, Tim Pratt, Sarah Monette, Rikki Ducornet, Nick Mamatas, Nicholas Royle, Marly Youmans, Liz Williams, Brian Evenson, Steve Aylett, Cat Rambo, and Richard Butner. All proceeds will go to a literacy charity, I believe. I'll keep you posted.

Today, it's back to "Salammbô Redux" and South County, Rhode Island.

We had a good walk yesterday, around the eastern end of Freedom Park. I had some exceptionally good Second Life, and Spooky put the finishing touches on Ogdred Weary House in New Babbage. I stopped by long enough to officially change the name of that plot of land from "Abney Park Blockhouse Laboratory" to "Ogdred Weary House." Later, we ate oatmeal cookies with raisins, and Spooky read aloud another chapter of Dune.

By the way, if you have not yet read "The Ape's Wife" in Clarkesworld Magazine #12, here's the link. And I'll remind you again that Beowulf is now officially in bookshops. The first printing on this book was truly gigantic, so I'm glad to see it selling well.

Okay. I think that's all for now. Must make words.

The last couple of days have been solid frustration. Sunday was good, and I did another 1,201 words on "Untitled Grotesque." But then the words wouldn't come on Monday, and yesterday was consumed with all sorts of the "busyness" that comes with writing, but is not actually writing. I hope to finish "Untitled Grotesque" today, if the words will come, and if I can shut out all the work that keeps me from doing the work that matters.

I have the cover (behind the cut) for the new edition of Tales of Pain and Wonder, featuring photography by Travis Burton (the same Travis Burton I thank in the acknowledgements to Daughter of Hounds). If you have not yet pre-ordered and would like a copy, you should probably do so soonish.

( Tales of Pain and Wonder 3rd edition )

Thanks to confusion over which publisher would have which rights to "Little Conversations" (a.k.a., "Salammbô Redux") — and I suspect I am partly to blame for this mess — there has been a bit of musical chairs involving "Little Conversations," "The Steam Dancer," and "The Ape's Wife." Though it was originally slated to appear first in the Subterranean Press anthology Subterranean: Tales of Dark Fantasy, "The Ape's Wife" will be replacing "Little Conversations" in Clarkesworld Magazine, sometime in the next day or two. It will also be included in the forthcoming anthology, Realms: The First Year of Clarkesworld, and in the signed chapbook version of Issue 12 of the magazine. "The Steam Dancer," originally intended for the Fall 2007 issue of Subterranean Online, will be replacing "The Ape's Wife" in Subterranean: Tales of Dark Fantasy. And, finally, an as yet undetermined story from Sirenia Digest will be replacing "The Steam Dancer" in the Fall 2007 Subterranean Online. Does that make sense? I hope so. As soon as "The Ape's Wife" is up, I'll post a link here. A good bit of yesterday was spent tweaking the story, and I think it's one of my best from the last couple of years (it was written back in April and May, you might recall).

Let's see. What else. Well, there have been movies. On Monday, disgusted with the lack of progress on the new story, I talked Spooky into a 4:30 matinee of James Mangold's remake of 3:10 to Yuma at Midtown. We were both very pleased with it. I saw someone refer to 3:10 to Yuma as the "best western since Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven" (1992), which might be true were it not for John Hillcoat and Nick Cave's The Proposition (2005). Then, last night, because we truly can be idiots sometimes, Spooky and I rented the unrated cut of Martin Weisz' The Hills Have Eyes 2. I have virtually nothing good to say about this film. It isn't scary. It isn't shocking. It isn't any good. It's actually quite a bit worse than Alexandre Aja's remake of The Hills Have Eyes (2006). The characters are, at best, targets, and in the absence of suspense, characterization, story, cinematography, and subtext, the film is little more than a cumbersome exercise in sadism and misogyny. It is, in all ways, both artless and pointless. I'm not slamming the film for being gory or vicious or bleak. I'm slamming it for being lousy and catering to the lowest possible common denominator. Move along...

One of the greatest frustrations I have in trying to explain the allure of Second Life to the uninitiated and the unaddicted is the difficulty of reproducing high-resolution images in this blog. But, Spooky (a.k.a Miss Artemisia Paine) took this shot last night, of Professor Nishi at sunset, on the roof of the Palaeozoic Museum in New Babbage with her telescope, and I was determined to include it here, regardless of the fact that this is a crappy, pixilated 72-dpi version of the image. It's behind the cut, and does not do justice.

( Stargazing )

The platypus says it's time to bring this entry to a close and drink my coffee. The monotreme knows what's best. Comments?

Postscript (4:31 p.m.): "The Ape's Wife" in now up at Clarkesworld Magazine. Just follow this link. I do detest the way that web publication places spaces between paragraphs. I've been told, again and again, it's because people won't read unbroken blocks of texts, but if that were true, they wouldn't read books. Okay, so most of them don't. Anyway, yes, the story's up, and I do hope you like it. I'd love to hear your reactions (unless you hate it, in which case I'd rather not know).

This is why I hang onto books that I will likely never read or consult again. Likely, but nothing's ever certain. Yesterday, I found myself going back to Elaine Pagels' Adam, Eve, and the Serpent (1988), which I probably haven't read since it was new. But there was this One Last Scene I wanted to add to "The Ape's Wife," and there was this bit of gnostic poetry I could not quite recall, but which I suspected I first encountered in a Pagels book. Turns out, it's "The Thunder: Perfect Mind". So, yeah, there was Elaine Pagels yesterday, and the etymology and origin of Cherubim, and how Xtians went and got themselves so hung up about sex, and so on and so forth. I wrote the new scene, the last new scene, which came in at about 300 words. At that point, the total word count for the story had reached 8,974. I read it aloud to Spooky, which led to a great number of corrections. Before the day was done, I'd put in another six hours on the story, and the total word count had inched up to 9,011. Finally, I have come to a point where I have to force myself to step away from this one. About 10:30 p.m., I e-mailed it to Bill Schafer at Subterranean Press, and also to sovay, because I needed another opinion. Though some very minor line edits may remain, I think that it is finally finished.

Thank you, Elaine Pagels. And Tori Amos.

Yesterday brought my contributor's copy of the May 2007 issue of Locus, the "horror issue." My short article, "Awful Things," can be found on page 56, right next to Ramsey Campbell's short article. There were a number of things in the issue to make me smile. Ed Bryant's comments on Alabaster and Daughter of Hounds, for example. He pronounces the latter "...a terrific contemporary Lovecraftian novel that never parodies or condescends, but pays loving tribute to the Great Old Guy of prolix horror even as the author crafts a tautly pyrotechnic tale of ghouls and wizards, alcoholism and strained family ties, love and violence." Also, jlassen makes reference to "the Baudelaire-ian epics of Caitlín R. Kiernan." It almost seems I'm getting more comparisons to Baudelaire these days than to HPL.

The issue also contains a review by Tim Pratt of Tales from the Woeful Platypus. When I learned of this review, I admit that I was leery. With both Platypus and Frog Toes and Tentacles before it, I asked subpress to please forgo advanced reading copies (which they did), as I really did want to see reviews for these books. I cannot say for sure whether I did this because I saw the "weird erotica" as just a minor and unimportant detour, or if I was afraid that writing it would adversely effect how my "serious" books were perceived, or if I was just being insecure. Regardless, the weird erotica has now become a significant part of my writing, and a part I genuinely enjoy, and I am decidedly not ashamed of it and have seen no evidence of these two books or Sirenia Digest having any sort of adverse effect on my career. And I am glad for Tim's review, which concludes that "...Kiernan has made magic and art from the intersection of sex and haunted lives, magic and secret desires." I was also pleased that he deemed the writing in "Daughter of Man, Mother of Wyrm" to be some of my "best, creating a wonderful derangement of the senses. Of "pas-en-arrìere,' the review says "...and the two [characters] do a dance of circling seduction, advancing and retreating, and delving into unexpectedly treacherous emotional territory; it's a remarkable character study." So, yeah, how could I not smile over all that?

What else was there to yesterday? Somehow, I managed not to leave the house, but I did catch a new documentary on the Discovery Science Channel about NASA's "Starship Orion" project. We read another chapter of The Children of Húrin (Chapter VI, "Túrin Among the Outlaws"). I half watched Katharine Hepburn in Sylvia Scarlett (1935) on TCM, which had some marvelous gender-bending moments and I wish I could have given it my full attention. After Spooky was asleep, I started Jay Parini's 1994 biography of John Steinbeck, but only made it through the prologue before I finally got too sleepy to read any farther. I think that was about 3 a.m.

Okay. Time to make the doughnuts. Or bagels. Or what have you. You know, things with holes.

Yesterday, I wrote 1,176 words on "The Ape's Wife," but did not find THE END. An unexpected scene occurred, and I allowed it to as it seemed important. The total word count for the story presently stands at 7,716, and it's not supposed to go past 8,000, so...I need to wrap it up today in only another 284 words. Hey, Rocky! Watch while I pull a rabbit outta this hat! Well, we shall see what we shall see. This is not an exact science, as some are wont to say. After the writing yesterday, I asked Spooky to read the entire story thus far back to me, and I am pleased with it. It's doing those things I wished for it to do, with a lot of surprises thrown in, and really, what more could I ask of it? I did note yesterday that it appears to show the influence of our just having re-read Slaughterhouse-Five. So, thank you Mr. Vonnegut.

I have remarked many times in interviews how I find it difficult to write without music. What I haven't said much about is how often I'll find a particular song that, for whatever reason, seems to perfectly express the tone of the story I happen to be writing and how I then proceed to listen to it over and over and over and over until the story is finished. For example, on Thursday I discovered that Tori Amos' "Bouncing Off Clouds" had the perfect tone to which to write "The Ape's Wife." And yesterday evening, at the end of the day's work, my iPod reported to me that I had, in two days and over about nine hours, listened to the song 130 times. I did not, of course, consciously listen, but some part of my brain heard and so the song helped to propel the story forward. It seems this sort of thing would drive a sane woman mad.

Someone — I cannot recall who — asked about the biplanes that were used to shoot Kong off the Empire State in the 1933 film, and I said I'd post a photo, and here it is (behind the cut):

( Curtiss Helldiver )

What else about yesterday, Sissy called from Tampa, and I spoke with him, and then Spooky spoke with him. After the writing, we walked to Videodrome for Kid Night movies, and to the market for Kid Night food. It was cloudy and the weather was cooler and windy, with an actual bit of nip to the air. We both remarked that it sort of felt like Rhode Island, near the sea. Our Kid Night movies began with Dave Meyers's 2007 remake of Robert Harmon's 1986 The Hitcher. I haven't much to say, one way or another. I haven't seen the original since 1986, so I can't really trust my comparisons of the two. Judging this film on its own merits, as though it were not a remake, well, it's not as bad as I expected. The soundtrack is unfortunate. Sean Bean does his best, but surely was miscast. There's a certain grim satisfaction in the ending, but it's still far less satisfying than the end of Tarantino's Death Proof. Mostly, one is left with the feeling this could have been a much better film, if only it had tried just a little harder. The second feature was Ishirô Honda's Gezora, Ganime, Kameba: Kessen! Nankai no daikaijû (1970), though I prefer the deliriously inaccurate English title, Space Ameoba. This is not Ishirô Honda anywhere near his best, but there were some funny bits. I think Spooky enjoyed it more than i did. Still, a good Kid Night double-bill, all in all. And afterwards, we read three more chapters of The Children of Húrin.

Anyway, the playtpus has heard enough about "Bouncing Off Clouds" and devious space amoebas and asks that I get to work, as it's already 12:41 p.m. And once the short story is finished, I must get back to work on the screenplay. But I leave you with the following bit of wishful thinking (behind the cut):

( if only )