For a Brief Time...
Yesterday, Harlan Ellison died. I want to write something about how much Harlan meant to me, about his acts of kindness towards me, his friendship and encouragement, about his importance to my own work, about how I never stopped being in awe (and a little afraid) of him. He was a giant, and the best I have ever managed is to stand on the shoulders of giants. At a very dark time in my life, he would call to tell me jokes, because he said I didn't laugh enough. And he said, "Kiddo, you've become a damn fine writer."
"For a brief time, I was here; and, for a brief time, I mattered." ~ Harlan Ellison, The Essential Ellison (1987)
I loved you, Harlan, and I always will. I love you with all my stingy, stunted heart.
----
I wrote 1,054 words yesterday, and I reached THE END of "A Chance of Frogs on Wednesday." I suspect it's exactly the sort of story my detractors hate. It offers no answers, no resolutions. The mystery matters more than any imaginable solution. I'm pleased with it. It's probably the only story I began in one city, then ended in another. Oh, wait. No, it isn't. Last year, I began "In the Flat Field" in Providence, then finished it in Birmingham.
We're getting thunderstorms almost every afternoon, and yesterday's was a monster. It took out a small pine tree behind our building.
My copies of the PS Publishing/Drugstore Indian Press edition of To Charles Fort, With Love reached me. They'd been sent to Providence, but the post office there forwarded them on to Birmingham. PS did a good job with the book, as they have done with the preceding three volumes of my short fiction. I love the portrait of Fort they used on the epigraph page and the back cover.
Mexican takeout for dinner, and then we watched Howard Hawks' Ball of Fire (1941), one of my four favorite screwball comedies.
Later,
CRK
9:27 a.m. (this morning)
"For a brief time, I was here; and, for a brief time, I mattered." ~ Harlan Ellison, The Essential Ellison (1987)
I loved you, Harlan, and I always will. I love you with all my stingy, stunted heart.
----
I wrote 1,054 words yesterday, and I reached THE END of "A Chance of Frogs on Wednesday." I suspect it's exactly the sort of story my detractors hate. It offers no answers, no resolutions. The mystery matters more than any imaginable solution. I'm pleased with it. It's probably the only story I began in one city, then ended in another. Oh, wait. No, it isn't. Last year, I began "In the Flat Field" in Providence, then finished it in Birmingham.
We're getting thunderstorms almost every afternoon, and yesterday's was a monster. It took out a small pine tree behind our building.
My copies of the PS Publishing/Drugstore Indian Press edition of To Charles Fort, With Love reached me. They'd been sent to Providence, but the post office there forwarded them on to Birmingham. PS did a good job with the book, as they have done with the preceding three volumes of my short fiction. I love the portrait of Fort they used on the epigraph page and the back cover.
Mexican takeout for dinner, and then we watched Howard Hawks' Ball of Fire (1941), one of my four favorite screwball comedies.
Later,
CRK
9:27 a.m. (this morning)