yonder on the horizon
This is going to be short, for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that I didn't get to sleep until well after five a.m. Actually, I started dozing while Spooky was reading me Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, but then woke completely when I got up to brush my teeth. I think I slept four and a half hours, all told. Maybe a little more. Ugh.
Yesterday was just shy of disasterous. I'd intended to finish the vignettes for Sirenia Digest #3, but then my iPod seized up while I was transferring a Bjork song from my harddrive ("The Anchor Song"). We did what we could. Spooky talked to a very helpful someone at AppleCare, but, in the end, a complete restore was all there was for it. Spooky did it. I hadn't the heart. There were just shy of seven hundred songs on the iPod. I lost them all, a year's worth of mp3s. None of it was backed up, because I don't have space on the iBook and I don't have an external hd and I'm too damn lazy to have ever bothered burning all those mp3s to CD. So. All that was saved were ninety eight songs that were still sitting on my iBook for whatever reason. It was after three p.m. before all this was sorted out, and I'd quite entirely drifted from the headspace necessary for writing erotica. But we did read Chapter Four of Daughter of Hounds. It's one of the most difficult chapters and one that will need a good deal of tweaking. If we stay on track, we'll finish the read-through on Friday, which gives me plenty of time to deal with all the editing and revision before the ms. goes away to my editor in NYC.
There's really not much else to say about yesterday that's worth saying, and even lesss that's worth reading. But I will point you towards the annual Locus magazine survey and poll. You don't have to be a subscriber to vote, but if you are a subscriber and include your subscription number on the form, you get a free issue, which is cool. I have some hope that "Bradbury Weather" (from Subterranean #2) and "La Peau Verte" (from To Charles Fort, With Love) will get some votes in the "novelette" category, and "The Pearl Diver" (from Futureshocks, edited by Lou Anders) will get a few votes in the short-story category. And, of course, that To Charles Fort, With Love will make the list, as well. Sometimes, it's these little pats on the back that keep me going, and I care not who knows it.
My thanks to dyfferent for identifying the yellow mystery flower from yesterday's entry. Gelsemium sempervirens, yellow jessamine. Also, it's always nice when a reader somehow manages to figure out an obscure source of inspiration, as did drkest_sun over in species_of_one. Well, in this case, it's more like identifying a source of childhood trauma, but yeah, the maned wolf (photos behind the cut), Chrysocyon brachyurus, is very much behind both the "stick dogs" ("Rats Live on No Evil Star" and Threshold) and the ghouls. I first saw a drawing of one when I was in first or second grade and, for some reason, it scared the beejeesus out of me. I remember trying to fall asleep one night, unable to stop thinking about those long black legs. Though I should say, as I've said elsewhere, that the things in Ramsey Campbell's wonderful novel Ancient Images also played a significant role in inspiring the "stick dogs." So, there you. I'm gonna go drown myself in coffee.
Yesterday was just shy of disasterous. I'd intended to finish the vignettes for Sirenia Digest #3, but then my iPod seized up while I was transferring a Bjork song from my harddrive ("The Anchor Song"). We did what we could. Spooky talked to a very helpful someone at AppleCare, but, in the end, a complete restore was all there was for it. Spooky did it. I hadn't the heart. There were just shy of seven hundred songs on the iPod. I lost them all, a year's worth of mp3s. None of it was backed up, because I don't have space on the iBook and I don't have an external hd and I'm too damn lazy to have ever bothered burning all those mp3s to CD. So. All that was saved were ninety eight songs that were still sitting on my iBook for whatever reason. It was after three p.m. before all this was sorted out, and I'd quite entirely drifted from the headspace necessary for writing erotica. But we did read Chapter Four of Daughter of Hounds. It's one of the most difficult chapters and one that will need a good deal of tweaking. If we stay on track, we'll finish the read-through on Friday, which gives me plenty of time to deal with all the editing and revision before the ms. goes away to my editor in NYC.
There's really not much else to say about yesterday that's worth saying, and even lesss that's worth reading. But I will point you towards the annual Locus magazine survey and poll. You don't have to be a subscriber to vote, but if you are a subscriber and include your subscription number on the form, you get a free issue, which is cool. I have some hope that "Bradbury Weather" (from Subterranean #2) and "La Peau Verte" (from To Charles Fort, With Love) will get some votes in the "novelette" category, and "The Pearl Diver" (from Futureshocks, edited by Lou Anders) will get a few votes in the short-story category. And, of course, that To Charles Fort, With Love will make the list, as well. Sometimes, it's these little pats on the back that keep me going, and I care not who knows it.
My thanks to dyfferent for identifying the yellow mystery flower from yesterday's entry. Gelsemium sempervirens, yellow jessamine. Also, it's always nice when a reader somehow manages to figure out an obscure source of inspiration, as did drkest_sun over in species_of_one. Well, in this case, it's more like identifying a source of childhood trauma, but yeah, the maned wolf (photos behind the cut), Chrysocyon brachyurus, is very much behind both the "stick dogs" ("Rats Live on No Evil Star" and Threshold) and the ghouls. I first saw a drawing of one when I was in first or second grade and, for some reason, it scared the beejeesus out of me. I remember trying to fall asleep one night, unable to stop thinking about those long black legs. Though I should say, as I've said elsewhere, that the things in Ramsey Campbell's wonderful novel Ancient Images also played a significant role in inspiring the "stick dogs." So, there you. I'm gonna go drown myself in coffee.