Do Not Deliver Until July 21, 2007!
I was just about to entitle this entry "The Wait is Not Over," but then the postman showed up with Spooky's copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. And it's a good damn thing, because she hardly slept last night. Now I think she's walking about the house hugging the box, which is marked "Do Not Deliver Until July 21, 2007." I've heard tell there was some eldritch bargain struck between booksellers and postal workers to keep the books from arriving early. I half expected the bloody thing to come by owl. But it is here, finally, and as soon as we finish Lemony Snicket's The Vile Village, we may begin reading it. This is called delayed gratification. It works for me.
Yesterday, I did 1,196 words on The Dinosaurs of Mars, and finished section four, which does not yet have a title. But after much confusion and vain attempts at plotting, I finally understand the essential nature of this story. Like "Bradbury Weather," "Zero Summer," "A Season of Broken Dolls," "In View of Nothing," and "Riding the White Bull" before it, The Dinosaurs of Mars is basically sf noir. I wanted it to be something else, something more akin to The Dry Salvages, but the story gets its way. The story always gets its way, unless I am the worst sort of liar. All writers are liars, but we must always tell the truth. When our lies begin to force stories into places they were not "meant" to go (teleology here is illusory), then we have begun to taint our lies with that which is untruthful. Still, I hope it will be a "ripping good space yarn." I start to suspect its plot is going the way of The Big Sleep. But there you go. Storytelling is a wild magic, and it does as it will.
A typical summer's day here in Georgia. The sun's a demon, and the birds have stopped singing. There's only the rise and fall of the cicadas to break the still.
Please have a look at the latest round of eBay auctions. That copy of From Weird and Distant Shores is one of my last, and I only have a few copies of Daughter of Hounds. And since I have publishers who seem to pay me only when the whimsical mood strikes them (except for Subterranean Press, who understand that writers have bills, too, just like real people), the eBay money is especially welcome right now.
I thought last night's episode of Dr. Who, "Gridlock," was particularly good. In fact, I loved it. Even without Christopher Eccelston, it might be my favourite episode so far. I suppose it just happened to hit all my buttons. But earlier, before Dr. Who, Spooky got us pizza from Fellini's and we had a twilight walk down Sinclair Avenue to see the dinosaur and Daisy Dog. Two perfectly adorable Hogwart's students went traipsing past, waving their wands in the air. I kind of suspect they were Hufflepuffs. Spooky and I are both Ravenclaw, of course. Later still, there was Second Life. The Palaeozoic Museum is actually beginning to feel like a museum, instead of just a great beautiful, empty building. I added code to some of the Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins murals to make them interactive, then we planted a "Cretaceous Garden," which includes ferns, a dogwood tree, and a eucalyptus. It's standing where, one day, our models of Hawkins' Lælaps and Hadrosaurus will stand. By one a.m., I was too bleary for SL, and we went to bed and read The Vile Village. I think we're halfway through. And the platypus says I've "prattled on" quite enough for one morning, so later, kiddos. There's coffee with my name on it.
Yesterday, I did 1,196 words on The Dinosaurs of Mars, and finished section four, which does not yet have a title. But after much confusion and vain attempts at plotting, I finally understand the essential nature of this story. Like "Bradbury Weather," "Zero Summer," "A Season of Broken Dolls," "In View of Nothing," and "Riding the White Bull" before it, The Dinosaurs of Mars is basically sf noir. I wanted it to be something else, something more akin to The Dry Salvages, but the story gets its way. The story always gets its way, unless I am the worst sort of liar. All writers are liars, but we must always tell the truth. When our lies begin to force stories into places they were not "meant" to go (teleology here is illusory), then we have begun to taint our lies with that which is untruthful. Still, I hope it will be a "ripping good space yarn." I start to suspect its plot is going the way of The Big Sleep. But there you go. Storytelling is a wild magic, and it does as it will.
A typical summer's day here in Georgia. The sun's a demon, and the birds have stopped singing. There's only the rise and fall of the cicadas to break the still.
Please have a look at the latest round of eBay auctions. That copy of From Weird and Distant Shores is one of my last, and I only have a few copies of Daughter of Hounds. And since I have publishers who seem to pay me only when the whimsical mood strikes them (except for Subterranean Press, who understand that writers have bills, too, just like real people), the eBay money is especially welcome right now.
I thought last night's episode of Dr. Who, "Gridlock," was particularly good. In fact, I loved it. Even without Christopher Eccelston, it might be my favourite episode so far. I suppose it just happened to hit all my buttons. But earlier, before Dr. Who, Spooky got us pizza from Fellini's and we had a twilight walk down Sinclair Avenue to see the dinosaur and Daisy Dog. Two perfectly adorable Hogwart's students went traipsing past, waving their wands in the air. I kind of suspect they were Hufflepuffs. Spooky and I are both Ravenclaw, of course. Later still, there was Second Life. The Palaeozoic Museum is actually beginning to feel like a museum, instead of just a great beautiful, empty building. I added code to some of the Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins murals to make them interactive, then we planted a "Cretaceous Garden," which includes ferns, a dogwood tree, and a eucalyptus. It's standing where, one day, our models of Hawkins' Lælaps and Hadrosaurus will stand. By one a.m., I was too bleary for SL, and we went to bed and read The Vile Village. I think we're halfway through. And the platypus says I've "prattled on" quite enough for one morning, so later, kiddos. There's coffee with my name on it.