Entry No. 5,128
Clouds today. They say we will have thunderstorms. Currently, it's 61˚F, here on the last day of September.
We spent most of yesterday trying to make the OCR thing work on the Silk pages. The problem has been getting rid of orphans and widows and graphics in the files. But Spooky thinks maybe she's figured it out. I also attempted a first go at a Table of Contents for the "Very Best of" collection, and I came out 7,076 words over the limit. I wasn't happy with the lineup, anyway. How the fuck does one objectively choose one's "very best" stories? How does one distill a 417,000-word, two-volume collection into a single 150k-word collection? I'm clearly neglecting the earlier (pre-2001) work, because I don't much like it anymore, and I'm trying to leave out most of the Lovecraftiana (it's all being collected in Houses Under the Sea: Mythos Tales), and I want the collection to demonstrate that I'm an extremely versatile author, not even remotely what would be thought of as genre horror. It's an almost impossible task. I've written to some people, asking for their input. I may run a poll here next week, regarding stories I'm on the fence about. But mostly, in the end, the ToC will be somewhat arbitrary? Is "Bradbury Weather" a better story than "Riding the White Bull," and what about "Galápagos"? All three are iterations of the "plague from space" theme, so I should only use one, but which one? And so on and on and on and on.
Last night, I settled on the new ghoul/Dream Lands story I'll be writing for Sirenia Digest No. 141.
I wish you could say "Fuck Trump" and not, you know, sound like you want to fuck Trump.
More and more, I believe that the cause of death on humanity's tombstone will read "Social Media."
Today, while Spooky scans pages, I need to go back to Black Helicopters again. I still have two scenes to write for the new Tor edition. Oh, and nothing was photogenic yesterday, so I leave you with this shot from Thursday, Hazel and Daniel's adorable pit bull, Tonka, who slobbered on my leg. I did not even mind.
TTFN,
Aunt Beast
5:34 p.m.
We spent most of yesterday trying to make the OCR thing work on the Silk pages. The problem has been getting rid of orphans and widows and graphics in the files. But Spooky thinks maybe she's figured it out. I also attempted a first go at a Table of Contents for the "Very Best of" collection, and I came out 7,076 words over the limit. I wasn't happy with the lineup, anyway. How the fuck does one objectively choose one's "very best" stories? How does one distill a 417,000-word, two-volume collection into a single 150k-word collection? I'm clearly neglecting the earlier (pre-2001) work, because I don't much like it anymore, and I'm trying to leave out most of the Lovecraftiana (it's all being collected in Houses Under the Sea: Mythos Tales), and I want the collection to demonstrate that I'm an extremely versatile author, not even remotely what would be thought of as genre horror. It's an almost impossible task. I've written to some people, asking for their input. I may run a poll here next week, regarding stories I'm on the fence about. But mostly, in the end, the ToC will be somewhat arbitrary? Is "Bradbury Weather" a better story than "Riding the White Bull," and what about "Galápagos"? All three are iterations of the "plague from space" theme, so I should only use one, but which one? And so on and on and on and on.
Last night, I settled on the new ghoul/Dream Lands story I'll be writing for Sirenia Digest No. 141.
I wish you could say "Fuck Trump" and not, you know, sound like you want to fuck Trump.
More and more, I believe that the cause of death on humanity's tombstone will read "Social Media."
Today, while Spooky scans pages, I need to go back to Black Helicopters again. I still have two scenes to write for the new Tor edition. Oh, and nothing was photogenic yesterday, so I leave you with this shot from Thursday, Hazel and Daniel's adorable pit bull, Tonka, who slobbered on my leg. I did not even mind.
TTFN,
Aunt Beast
5:34 p.m.