"I'm an indisguisable shade of twilight."
1. There should be a law to dissuade people from going to the theatre when they're ill. Violators should be subject to steep fines. I cannot imagine being so uncouth as to subject others to your diseases, simply because you wish to be fucking entertained; we're not talking about essential public interaction. Not the market. Not the pharmacy or your workplace or a bank. The same sort of law should cover restaurants.
2. The weather has turned wet and tolerable. Cold spring. Currently 45˚F, feels like 1.1˚C.
3. Three days, all essentially lost. But I will not here speak to the whys and hows. In bits and pieces on other days I might, maybe. Maybe not. But I spent too much time in Pawtucket, amid Northern street squalor, abandoned mills and warehouses, a dirty green river, and a carnival that is either setting up or breaking down or existing always somewhere in between. From these lost days has followed both great relief and considerable anxiety.
4. I begin to believe that it may be necessary for me to go back onto Lamictal, for both mine and Kathryn's sake. But, still, I don't know if I can. I'd rather be dead and done with this whole fiasco than to ever subject myself to life on Lamictal again.
5. During the spate of lost days, I nonetheless managed ~4,500 words on Cherry Bomb. I finished Chapter Six and began Chapter Seven, the final chapter. This long, silly nightmare will soon be over, and I can move on. I predict the book will be finished on April 4th, even if I have to pull a couple of marathon writing sessions.
6. There's a lot "on my plate," as They are wont to say. I'm looking at April-July. Most of it is editing, preparing new editions of existing novels, collections, and short fiction. Here's what my "schedule" looks like as of today, a list in no particular order:
a. Finish Cherry Bomb. [Roc, finish by April 4th]
b. Compile and edit all of Beneath an Oil-Dark Sea: The Best Caitlín R. Kiernan (Volume Two) [Subterranean Press, deadline May 15th] + chapbook
c. Write Alabaster: The Good, the Bad, and the Bird. [Dark Horse, April and May]
d. Sirenia Digest [Goat Girl Press, ongoing]
e. Compile new editions of Tales of Pain and Wonder, To Charles Fort, With Love, A is for Alien, and The Ammonite Violin & Others [PS Publishing, Drugstore Indian Press, mostly editing, ASAP].
f. Finish up work of Centipede Press edition of The Drowning Girl: A Memoir. [very, very almost done]
g. Special Guest, San Diego Comic-Con, San Diego, CA [July 24-27]
7. On Wednesday I wrote cover copy for Cherry Bomb. What appears on the cover will look something like this (the actual copywriters will shorten it):
MEET SIOBHAN QUINN -
HALF VAMPIRE, HALF WEREWOLF, RETIRED MONSTER HUNTER
Three long years have passed since she turned her back on Providence, Rhode Island and its seedy supernatural underbelly. Three years since she walked out on Mean Mr. B. and took a bus headed anywhere at all, hoping for a little peace from the endless parade of horrors and calamities. But a dead girl who quarrels with the moon can’t seem to catch a break, and now, on the streets of Manhattan and beneath a Boston graveyard, Quinn finds herself caught between the proverbial rock and a hard place. Again.
So, what do you do when you find yourself stuck in the middle of a three-million-year-old grudge match between the ghouls and the djinn? When, by no fault of your own, you’re left holding the hellish Byzantine artifact that could turn the tide for the Ghūl? Oh, and don’t forget the depraved, incestuous, cannibalistic half-ghoul twins, self-appointed messiahs intent on taking that artifact from you and ushering in a new Dark Age when ghouls will rule the world.
And don’t forget that you’ve fallen in love with the woman who got you into this mess.
And that you ain’t nobody’s hero…
7. On Tuesday, on Facebook, I asked: How does a woman vow, at 49 plus 10 months (or 50 minus 2 months), that she truly is going to stop wasting her life and begin doing things that actually, genuinely matter to her? Is that just too absurd to even be possible?*
It's a very, very serious matter. Right now, nothing in my life can compare in importance to the gravity of these questions.
My Sails in Rags,
Aunt Beast
* Please, no insipid rose-tinted crap about how young fifty is, etc., etc.
2. The weather has turned wet and tolerable. Cold spring. Currently 45˚F, feels like 1.1˚C.
3. Three days, all essentially lost. But I will not here speak to the whys and hows. In bits and pieces on other days I might, maybe. Maybe not. But I spent too much time in Pawtucket, amid Northern street squalor, abandoned mills and warehouses, a dirty green river, and a carnival that is either setting up or breaking down or existing always somewhere in between. From these lost days has followed both great relief and considerable anxiety.
4. I begin to believe that it may be necessary for me to go back onto Lamictal, for both mine and Kathryn's sake. But, still, I don't know if I can. I'd rather be dead and done with this whole fiasco than to ever subject myself to life on Lamictal again.
5. During the spate of lost days, I nonetheless managed ~4,500 words on Cherry Bomb. I finished Chapter Six and began Chapter Seven, the final chapter. This long, silly nightmare will soon be over, and I can move on. I predict the book will be finished on April 4th, even if I have to pull a couple of marathon writing sessions.
6. There's a lot "on my plate," as They are wont to say. I'm looking at April-July. Most of it is editing, preparing new editions of existing novels, collections, and short fiction. Here's what my "schedule" looks like as of today, a list in no particular order:
a. Finish Cherry Bomb. [Roc, finish by April 4th]
b. Compile and edit all of Beneath an Oil-Dark Sea: The Best Caitlín R. Kiernan (Volume Two) [Subterranean Press, deadline May 15th] + chapbook
c. Write Alabaster: The Good, the Bad, and the Bird. [Dark Horse, April and May]
d. Sirenia Digest [Goat Girl Press, ongoing]
e. Compile new editions of Tales of Pain and Wonder, To Charles Fort, With Love, A is for Alien, and The Ammonite Violin & Others [PS Publishing, Drugstore Indian Press, mostly editing, ASAP].
f. Finish up work of Centipede Press edition of The Drowning Girl: A Memoir. [very, very almost done]
g. Special Guest, San Diego Comic-Con, San Diego, CA [July 24-27]
7. On Wednesday I wrote cover copy for Cherry Bomb. What appears on the cover will look something like this (the actual copywriters will shorten it):
MEET SIOBHAN QUINN -
HALF VAMPIRE, HALF WEREWOLF, RETIRED MONSTER HUNTER
Three long years have passed since she turned her back on Providence, Rhode Island and its seedy supernatural underbelly. Three years since she walked out on Mean Mr. B. and took a bus headed anywhere at all, hoping for a little peace from the endless parade of horrors and calamities. But a dead girl who quarrels with the moon can’t seem to catch a break, and now, on the streets of Manhattan and beneath a Boston graveyard, Quinn finds herself caught between the proverbial rock and a hard place. Again.
So, what do you do when you find yourself stuck in the middle of a three-million-year-old grudge match between the ghouls and the djinn? When, by no fault of your own, you’re left holding the hellish Byzantine artifact that could turn the tide for the Ghūl? Oh, and don’t forget the depraved, incestuous, cannibalistic half-ghoul twins, self-appointed messiahs intent on taking that artifact from you and ushering in a new Dark Age when ghouls will rule the world.
And don’t forget that you’ve fallen in love with the woman who got you into this mess.
And that you ain’t nobody’s hero…
7. On Tuesday, on Facebook, I asked: How does a woman vow, at 49 plus 10 months (or 50 minus 2 months), that she truly is going to stop wasting her life and begin doing things that actually, genuinely matter to her? Is that just too absurd to even be possible?*
It's a very, very serious matter. Right now, nothing in my life can compare in importance to the gravity of these questions.
My Sails in Rags,
Aunt Beast
* Please, no insipid rose-tinted crap about how young fifty is, etc., etc.