greygirlbeast: (white3)
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.
greygirlbeast: (chi6)
So...yeah, the BBC2 interview for The Culture Show went well, I think. We did it this afternoon (for me, at least it was afternoon), in the Abney Park laboratory. The episode will air next Saturday, if you happen to get Scottish television and would like to know what a NeoVictorian Nebari/Gallifreyan time-traveler has to say about the relevance of Beowulf to the modern world. I have no idea how it's going to come across on the screen, but, if it works out, maybe I have a new medium for doing live interviews.

I have a long entry I want and need to make, but right now I'm just too fried. I'll save it for tomorrow morning.

Oh, but I will note that someone at Locus is very fond of "The Ape's Wife", and my thanks to Sonya Taaffe and Sean Wallace for alerting me to the review, which reads:

"'The Ape's Wife' by Caitlín R. Kiernan (September) is a majestic novelette imagining varying scenarios for the climax of King Kong: does Ann Darrow, the beauty played by Fay Wray, truly return to New York, or does she stay on Skull Island? Is she marooned, a high priestess, or (back in America) an embittered, aging alcoholic, otherwise an older woman pondering Kong's skeleton, now a neglected museum exhibit? Is Kong god to a destroyed Manhattan? These possibilities progress through Ann's dreaming mind powerfully and very memorably."

Oh, and speaking of Beowulf, how about a letter from a reader, just to round it all out? Jason Schmus writes:

I recently picked up your novelization of the Beowulf script, and am enjoying it so far, but that little dedication at the beginning is driving me nuts. My high school Latin is twenty plus years behind me, and the little that remains serves me only to fill in crossword puzzles, translate the odd motto, or to work out unfamiliar word derivations. I just don't remember enough to puzzle it out. Something something defend us from the wolves?

The Latin phrase in question is Talibus laboribus lupos defendimus, which translates as "By such labours do we ward off the wolves."
greygirlbeast: (Bowie1)
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 [livejournal.com profile] 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.
greygirlbeast: (white2)
Yesterday was absolutely the last day I could afford to spend on editing the 3rd edition of Tales of Pain and Wonder. That said, today will probably be the actual last day I spend editing it. We made it all the way through the typescript yesterday, dealing with the hundreds of edits that Spooky was uncertain how to handle. Today, she's going to check over Peter Straub's afterword and Doug Winter's introduction for formatting problems. I'm going to write a new author's preface, and go over the indicia page, the publication history, general formatting throughout the ms., make sure all the ellipses are right, run the highly unreliable MS Word spellcheck over the whole thing, and probably attend to a number of details I can't think of right off. Then all that will remain to be done is expanding "Salammbô Redux" by about four or five thousand words, and it will do done. I have resolved this will be the last edition ever of this collection. There might be future printings, but this will be the final new edition.

I don't think there's much else worth saying about yesterday. I did not get back to work on the screenplay. The editing left me too tired for more than a short walk, and still I was awake until after three a.m. I know people who draw a distinction between physical and mental exhaustion, but for me they seem to be one and the same. My mind wears this blasted meatsuit to a frazzle. I saw something just now, a new study concluding that insomnia increases the risk of heart attack. I will not point out that a conflicting study a few months back found that insomniacs live longer. The way I feel right now, a heart attack doesn't sound so bad.

And I see I have not had a day off since September 9th, which was...fifteen days ago.

Ah, but I did get a nice email from John Glover, which contained this interesting bit about "Little Conversations":

"Little Conversations" was a completely different kind of pleasure. As you've said, it's "blatantly autobiographical," which is refreshing. Often fantasy authors put their own life through so many filters before it winds up on the page, it might as well not be there. It's nice to read something less filtered. It leaves me a little uncomfortable commenting on the story, as if I were commenting on your life, but if all good fiction's ultimately autobiographical, I guess that's the name of the game.

If you have not yet read "The Ape's Wife," you may find it here.

And now, the platypus will have herhisits way with me. To paraphrase Ms Woolf, "a woman must have stimulants and a platypus of her own if she is to write fiction."
greygirlbeast: (white2)
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).
greygirlbeast: (kong2)
Ah, where do I begin! Treachery and worse, and but for chance and fortune and the overheard mutterings of the pirate crew on whose ship I had become a passenger, hoping thereby to reach the mouth of the Caranduin...my words are a tumult. Even now, I shudder at how near this mission was brought to ruin. Yesterday I chanced to notice a very large crow perched in the rigging, a foul thing watching me with contempt. And shortly thereafter, I was was working on this blasted manuscript in what passed for the fo'castle of that leaking tub, writing by what light one can wring from tallow, when I heard the Captain and his First talking above decks. Whispering between themselves, thinking I would not hear. I was a fool to believe I would so easily evade [livejournal.com profile] setsuled, and more than a fool to trust the scum that ply the waters of this black sea. I had been recognized in Thaurband and word was passed from ship to ship by crow heralds. I listened in horror as the Captain plotted murder and mangled the Sindarin tongue, stuttering and stumbling over the name bestowed upon me a year ago by the elves who yet remain in East Lórien. I set the ship ablaze, trusting we were near enough to shore that I might survive the swim, and made my escape in the confusion and pandemonium that followed. Now, believing myself only a short ways east of the marches where the Caranduin empties into the Núrnen, I will turn north. I know now that I am discovered, though I have yet some dim hope that my purpose remains a mystery to [livejournal.com profile] setsuled. By now, I should have passed the peak of Morigost and reached the Gorgoroth. Instead, I am countless leagues west of that course, half lost or more in these desolate lands...

Or, to put it another way, the Mordorian Death March has become a sort of Mordorian Death Meander, as I wait for word from Los Angeles and New York about exactly what must be done and why and how and by when. Since I have no time to waste in waiting, I resolved yesterday, after speaking with my editor at HarperCollins, that while I wait I will attend to other projects. Yesterday, I read through "The Ape's Wife" again and made what I hope will be the final revisions to the manuscript. I really do love this story. And I am determined to get it right. Anyway, today I will try to get a head start on Sirenia Digest #19 (June) and begin a new vignette. Once again, The Dinosaurs of Mars has been derailed — or at least delayed — and at this point I can't imagine I'll be able to begin Joey LaFaye before July.

A good walk yesterday. Last night, we watched Stuart Rosenberg's Cool Hand Luke (1967). This has long been a favourite of mine, but Spooky had never seen it. When I am old and finally sit down to compile my list of the 500 best American films, Cool Hand Luke will be somewhere on that list. At midnight, we caught an old Nova episode about the creation of the Channeled Scablands by the catastrophic failure of the ice dam that held back Glacial Lake Missoula 15,000 years ago. And then I read another chapter of the Steinbeck bio. And that was yesterday — pirates, tattling crows, burning boats, and all.

Onward...

Postscript (1:09 p.m.) — I have just learned of the death of Lloyd Alexander. Another light is gone from the world.
greygirlbeast: (Default)
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 [livejournal.com profile] 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, [livejournal.com profile] 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.
greygirlbeast: (kong2)
Yesterday, I wrote 885 words on "The Ape's Wife," finally finding THE END. The total word count for the story comes to 8,683 words. But, fortunately, I have a very understanding editor, and he was cool with the extra 683 words. I am not yet entirely certain how I feel about the ending. This story first occurred to me as a 2-3k-word vignette for Sirenia Digest and, in the writing, became a sort of hallucinatory mini-epic of the weird. Sort of like what might have happened if Lord Dunsany had written a sequel to the 1933 King Kong. Anyway, after dinner, I did four good pages on the "Onion" screenplay, so the Zokoutu page meter looks like this:

Zokutou word meterZokutou word meter
8 / 115
(7.0%)


Which gets me almost to the end of Scene 3. Frank and Willa in their horrid little apartment above the Chinese apothecary. But. Today is a day off. Spooky finished with Murder of Angels yesterday, and I need to put some distance between myself and "The Ape's Wife" before I can determine if and how and why it might need to be tweaked. Plus, now that the short story is finished, I must proceed to the revisions of the spawn of the Forced and New Reconsolidated marches, which will likely consume most of next week.

I never did mention that I thought last Monday's episode of Heroes was somewhat less mediocre than usual, and it caused me to suspect that maybe some part of the problem is that they started the story in the wrong place.

A good walk yesterday, continuing our exploration of the parks along Ponce de Leon. We crossed Springdale and Virgilee to Oak Grove Park, which used to be Brightwood Park. It is shown as Brightwood on Olmsted's blueprints for the five parks, and I cannot imagine why the name has been changed. Except that Atlanta seems allergic to its own history. Spooky spotted a luna moth (Actias luna) chrysalis hanging in a tree. There were squirrels and robins. A very pleasant stroll. Back home, after dinner and screenplay writing, we watched Steve Anderson's hilarious documentary Fuck (2005), followed by an old favourite of mine, George Roy Hill's The Sting (1973).

Okay. I think that's all for now. I should get out of here before the dozing platypus awakens and slaps the manacles on me once again. I leave you with this image, Merian C. Cooper dreaming of Kong, which seems appropriate the day after finishing "The Ape's Wife."



greygirlbeast: (tonk!2)
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 )
greygirlbeast: (tonks!)
Yesterday, I did 1,203 words on "The Ape's Wife," which is coming along quite well. It would probably be coming along a bit faster, but there are constant "research pauses," as I can never seem to get all this stuff worked out ahead of time. For example: exactly what sort of biplane appears in the 1933 film? Answer, after much searching: the Curtiss "Helldiver" (Model 77) with a 700Hp Wright engine. Or, also for example: which street adjacent to the Empire State Building does Kong fall to? Answer: probably 5th Avenue. And on and on and on. I won't even get started about Sumatran flora. Not so much progress on the "Onion" screenplay last night, not enough for my liking. Only one good page, in part because I went back and rewrote the first three pages. So, this morning (by five minutes, it is still morning), the Zokoutu page meter looks like this:

Zokutou word meterZokutou word meter
4 / 115
(3.5%)


Spooky's work on the Murder of Angels galleys continues. She's just finished Chapter 5 ("Pillars of Fire," to page 159). Around here, it seems there is very little at the moment except work. I did squeeze in a National Geographic documentary last night, an examination of supervolcanoes and the role of Thera in the destruction of the Minoan civilization 3,500 years ago. Neat stuff. It now appears as though the eruption rates a 7, not a 6 (Krakatoa was a 6, Mount St. Helens only a 5), and that the pyroclastic flow may have swept across the sea to Crete, accompanied by a truly enormous tsunami.

My grateful thanks to Robin Bunch, aka [livejournal.com profile] bunny_angel, who will now be serving as my web designer/tech/troubleshooter. Thanks, also, to the others who inquired; I will try to write you all personal "thank you" notes soon. Your enthusiasm is appreciated.

We had quite a good walk yesterday evening, and in Freedom Park we encountered a wonderfully raucous anti-Bush/anti-war rally, complete with megaphones and an enormous "impeach Bush" banner. I wish I'd had the camera with me to record the occasion. We walked along Moreland north to Ponce, then turned east and followed the parks along Ponce de Leon. Maybe a mile and a half altogether. Go feet!

Inspired by [livejournal.com profile] docbrite, Spooky and I are going to start keeping a "yard list." That is, the bird species we've actually seen here within the confines of our tiny yard. We sat down this morning after breakfast and tallied up all we can presently recall, a rather impressive 18 taxa. Amazingly, I do not think we have ever seen a pigeon in this yard. Anyway, the list is behind the cut, for them what cares about things ornithological:

Yard List, as of 5/3/07 )

Oh. And I have a brand-new Nymphadora Tonks icon, as there are now publicity shots from Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix online. You may see them here. Tonks is almost enough to tempt me to commit a bout of Potter slash. Maybe Nymphadora/Hermione/Bellatrix Lestrange? It does have possibilities.

The platypus says to shut up about witch pr0n and start writing, and hesheit is in no mood this morning to be lightly disregarded.

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Caitlín R. Kiernan

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