Reptile volant et la Dame
Outside, where the sun has not yet touched, there's a thin frosting of snow. It'll be gone as soon as the cold sun finds it. Winter eats its own. Currently, 29˚F here in Providence, but the ever helpful windchill means it feels 18˚F. In the South, we'd call this goddamn cold.
Yesterday I intended to get Sirenia Digest #94 together and out to subscribers. But then Kathryn and I spent the afternoon on more edits to "Mote[L] 2032." It's one of those pieces I'll never truly believe is finished. It can always be made just a little bit better. sovay kindly read the story for me yesterday. The Drowning Girl: A Memoir was like that. Peter Straub finally had to tell me to stop working on it. Anyway, today I am going to put the issue together.
Yesterday was also spent removing more books from my office, and reorganizing what remains. I'm estimating that approximately five hundred books have left this room. I'm finally nearing the end of that whittling away, and now I just have to get all the books I'm discarding out of the house. There are still several boxes to be considered by Paper Nautilus, and the rest will likely go to local libraries to do with as they will. Just so long as the books are not here, I don't care. If I can get everything done today I mean to get done, tomorrow we'll be taking two empty bookcases to the storage place in Pawtucket, and we should be able to shelve most of the eBay stock (hundreds of authors copies of my books from both Subterranean Press and Penguin). Slowly, progress is being made, and it feels good to be lightening the load.
If you have not already, please have a look at the current eBay auctions. The BIG-ASS XMAS EBAY BLOWOUT, remember? In particular, I draw your attention to this auction: Letter O from the lettered edition of Tales from the Woeful Platypus, which comes with a handmade by Spooky beanie platypus. Well, actually, it's a ricey platypus, as it's filled with rice, not beans.
Last night we finally were able to see Luc Besson's Les aventures extraordinaires d'Adèle Blanc-Sec! I'd only been waiting since fucking 2010. It's a marvelous film. Besson and some of his longtime collaborators - Eric Serra, Thierry Arbogast, etc. - have surely done Jacques Tardi's comic justice. I'm a great fan of Besson's The Fifth Element (1997), and in many ways Les aventures extraordinaires d'Adèle Blanc-Sec feels like a companion piece to that film. It shares much the same style, and, of course, both have roots in French comics.* The cast is superb, especially Louise Bourgoin in the title role. So, yes. See this film if you possibly can. It's now out on DVD and Blu-ray, and it's worth owning. Do not watch it dubbed!
Okay. I just got an email from my editor reminding me that, this morning, I have to go over some layouts for the forthcoming Dark Horse reprint of the Alabaster prose collection. I truly do wonder how grand publishing must have been in the days before email...
Better Than Yesterday,
Aunt Beast
* As much as I loathe Japanese manga, I love la bande dessinée franco-belge.
Yesterday I intended to get Sirenia Digest #94 together and out to subscribers. But then Kathryn and I spent the afternoon on more edits to "Mote[L] 2032." It's one of those pieces I'll never truly believe is finished. It can always be made just a little bit better. sovay kindly read the story for me yesterday. The Drowning Girl: A Memoir was like that. Peter Straub finally had to tell me to stop working on it. Anyway, today I am going to put the issue together.
Yesterday was also spent removing more books from my office, and reorganizing what remains. I'm estimating that approximately five hundred books have left this room. I'm finally nearing the end of that whittling away, and now I just have to get all the books I'm discarding out of the house. There are still several boxes to be considered by Paper Nautilus, and the rest will likely go to local libraries to do with as they will. Just so long as the books are not here, I don't care. If I can get everything done today I mean to get done, tomorrow we'll be taking two empty bookcases to the storage place in Pawtucket, and we should be able to shelve most of the eBay stock (hundreds of authors copies of my books from both Subterranean Press and Penguin). Slowly, progress is being made, and it feels good to be lightening the load.
If you have not already, please have a look at the current eBay auctions. The BIG-ASS XMAS EBAY BLOWOUT, remember? In particular, I draw your attention to this auction: Letter O from the lettered edition of Tales from the Woeful Platypus, which comes with a handmade by Spooky beanie platypus. Well, actually, it's a ricey platypus, as it's filled with rice, not beans.
Last night we finally were able to see Luc Besson's Les aventures extraordinaires d'Adèle Blanc-Sec! I'd only been waiting since fucking 2010. It's a marvelous film. Besson and some of his longtime collaborators - Eric Serra, Thierry Arbogast, etc. - have surely done Jacques Tardi's comic justice. I'm a great fan of Besson's The Fifth Element (1997), and in many ways Les aventures extraordinaires d'Adèle Blanc-Sec feels like a companion piece to that film. It shares much the same style, and, of course, both have roots in French comics.* The cast is superb, especially Louise Bourgoin in the title role. So, yes. See this film if you possibly can. It's now out on DVD and Blu-ray, and it's worth owning. Do not watch it dubbed!
Okay. I just got an email from my editor reminding me that, this morning, I have to go over some layouts for the forthcoming Dark Horse reprint of the Alabaster prose collection. I truly do wonder how grand publishing must have been in the days before email...
Better Than Yesterday,
Aunt Beast
* As much as I loathe Japanese manga, I love la bande dessinée franco-belge.