I'm not dead yet...
Thursday was a day of such an especial and complete vileness that, henceforth, it shall be not mentioned and shall, indeed, be stricken from all calendars. It shall be consigned to that dim hell reserved for days which offer up not even the slimmest bit of redemption for themselves. Which is to say it shall be forgotten. Yesterday, however, was a good day. For one thing, I wrote 1,987 words in a mere two hours, beginning and completing the second vignette for Sirenia Digest #3. Right now, it's called simply "Untitled 17," though I'll probably find something a little more specific before the digest goes out. Every bit of it came as a surprise to me, and I'll not say the sort of things that will spoil it for the subscribers (and why haven't you subscribed?), but I will say a couple of things. First, it's almost certainly the angriest, nastiest bit of business I've written for the digest. My fingertips are still bloody. Second, it marks my first piece of male-on-male erotica. Honestly, I wasn't sure that was something I could do, but now I see that I can. Oh, I will say a third thing about it. It's written as a single, continuous paragraph, all 1,987 words of it. That's the way it came to me. That's the way I let it be born. One of the wonderful things about Sirenia Digest is that it allows me to do many things I might not do were I writing for an editor. It allows me to flex and experiment and explore, and for that I am grateful.
After I finished the vignette and had read it to Spooky, we went for a long walk. We went almost as far as Candler Park. It was an extraordinary day, at least 65F, a perfectly unnatural early spring day, right here at the start of February. Later on in the entry, there are photos to prove my point. We were too warm in our sweaters and took them off about halfway in. Today the weather is twenty degrees cooler and much more seasonal, but looking at the long-term doohickey, I see the mildness will soon return. And after the walk, we read through Chapter Three of Daughter of Hounds, which is coming along nicely, thank you.
My thanks to everyone who assisted with my baffledness over "plogs." I still don't know how I "plogged" anyone when I'm not sure how the noun, in this instance, is verbed, but at least I know now that "plog" is merely an attempt by Amazon to own a word of its own invention. So I guess I should be writing that out as Plog™. Anyway, here's something cool, for any of you who want to see photographs of the covers of pretty much every single thing I've ever published, here, from iWeb and David Kirkpatrick (whom I hope will not take offence that I've linked to it). And, on the subject of things www, I have officially had it with Firefox. Version 1.4 is proving no less buggy than whatever later version I first tried, and I will not suffer a programme that makes me want to hurt my iBook that many times in a single hour. I will most likely now try to newest version of Safari.
Er..what else? Oh. I came across an amusingly snotty "review" of Silk on some LJ or another. I quote: "Which is all well and good except for the fact that I'm on page 65 and it seems the author completely forgot to add the 'horror' to her horror story. There's absolutely no scary to be found," to which I can only say, for the umpteen zillionth time - Silk was never meant to be a "horror" novel. That it was promoted as such by my publisher was not my doing and not my fault. That said (again), there are some bits here and there which I personally found disturbing, in the rather narrow sense of "scary" which I think this reader craves, but you do have to read a bit farther in than page 65 to reach them. This is one of the bad things that happens when publishers niche market your books and when readers are reading a book for only one sort of effect, when they treat a novel which was meant to do very many things as, essentially, a piece of porn, which they believe is there merely to give them the particular hard-on they desire. I would also point out that if Said Reader wishes to complain about what Neil had to say about the book, they should at least endeavor to spell his name correctly (Gaiman, not Gaimen). And finally, to fairly judge my work, I might suggest they try reading something I wrote sometime in, oh, let's say the last decade or so*. Which is not to say that I don't still love and stand behind Silk, because I do.
Okay, kiddos. Here are the photos I promised (behind the cut). I gotta go kick the platypus again...
Dogwood buds gone green and fuzzy.
Our hill in the park, starting to get green.
A violet on said hill.
I'm not sure what this is called, but it's very yellow.
Moss sex!
* Though Silk was originally published in May 1998, I finished writing it in January 1996 (it sold to Penguin one year later), hence it wasn't written in the last decade. Which is kind of scary.
After I finished the vignette and had read it to Spooky, we went for a long walk. We went almost as far as Candler Park. It was an extraordinary day, at least 65F, a perfectly unnatural early spring day, right here at the start of February. Later on in the entry, there are photos to prove my point. We were too warm in our sweaters and took them off about halfway in. Today the weather is twenty degrees cooler and much more seasonal, but looking at the long-term doohickey, I see the mildness will soon return. And after the walk, we read through Chapter Three of Daughter of Hounds, which is coming along nicely, thank you.
My thanks to everyone who assisted with my baffledness over "plogs." I still don't know how I "plogged" anyone when I'm not sure how the noun, in this instance, is verbed, but at least I know now that "plog" is merely an attempt by Amazon to own a word of its own invention. So I guess I should be writing that out as Plog™. Anyway, here's something cool, for any of you who want to see photographs of the covers of pretty much every single thing I've ever published, here, from iWeb and David Kirkpatrick (whom I hope will not take offence that I've linked to it). And, on the subject of things www, I have officially had it with Firefox. Version 1.4 is proving no less buggy than whatever later version I first tried, and I will not suffer a programme that makes me want to hurt my iBook that many times in a single hour. I will most likely now try to newest version of Safari.
Er..what else? Oh. I came across an amusingly snotty "review" of Silk on some LJ or another. I quote: "Which is all well and good except for the fact that I'm on page 65 and it seems the author completely forgot to add the 'horror' to her horror story. There's absolutely no scary to be found," to which I can only say, for the umpteen zillionth time - Silk was never meant to be a "horror" novel. That it was promoted as such by my publisher was not my doing and not my fault. That said (again), there are some bits here and there which I personally found disturbing, in the rather narrow sense of "scary" which I think this reader craves, but you do have to read a bit farther in than page 65 to reach them. This is one of the bad things that happens when publishers niche market your books and when readers are reading a book for only one sort of effect, when they treat a novel which was meant to do very many things as, essentially, a piece of porn, which they believe is there merely to give them the particular hard-on they desire. I would also point out that if Said Reader wishes to complain about what Neil had to say about the book, they should at least endeavor to spell his name correctly (Gaiman, not Gaimen). And finally, to fairly judge my work, I might suggest they try reading something I wrote sometime in, oh, let's say the last decade or so*. Which is not to say that I don't still love and stand behind Silk, because I do.
Okay, kiddos. Here are the photos I promised (behind the cut). I gotta go kick the platypus again...
Dogwood buds gone green and fuzzy.
Our hill in the park, starting to get green.
A violet on said hill.
I'm not sure what this is called, but it's very yellow.
Moss sex!
* Though Silk was originally published in May 1998, I finished writing it in January 1996 (it sold to Penguin one year later), hence it wasn't written in the last decade. Which is kind of scary.