Howard Hughes and the Ghost of Better Times
Yesterday, Bill Schafer at Subterranean Press passed along the news that the limited edition of The Ammonite Violin & Others has sold out. There are still copies of the trade hardcover, for now. But I expect the book to sell out prior to publication, so you might want to preorder. My thanks to all who have preordered so far. I'm very excited about this book, as it contains some of my best work to date.
Here in Providence, we're having a wonderful day of thunderstorms and dark skies. The thunder woke me at 10:30 this morning, but I dozed off for another hour, only to be awakened by the thunder a second time.
Yesterday, I dithered and searched for story. And a very strange thing happened. As the day progressed, "The Maltese Unicorn" began to metamorphose from joke to viable story concept. Some of it was a number of interesting comments to yesterday's blog entry. Some of it was just my brain working a problem. By six p.m. or so, it had blossomed into a full-fledged, slightly tongue-in-cheek story involving the aphrodisiac qualities that might be derived from a unicorn's horn, two rival demon brothel's in 1940s Manhattan, an unscrupulous dealer in occult antiquities named Nathaniel Adler (wink, wink), and...well, lots of other stuff. I was sort of excited and appalled, all at once. I emailed the book's editor and ran the story idea past her, fully expecting to be told that I was right to have wanted to punch myself in the face for having thought it up. Instead, I was encouraged to have a go at it...so...I suppose I shall. The next couple of weeks will be weird, indeed.
Spooky has begun a new round of eBay auctions.
Last night, we watched Disney's The Little Mermaid, which I'd not seen in just about forever. It holds up well. It got me to thinking about the first time I saw it, late in 1989, at a midnight showing in Birmingham. Elizabeth was there, and Jada, and another friend, Annie, who was outraged at the happy ending. Annie went on and on..and on...and on...about how Disney had butchered Hans Christian Andersen's story. That night, her annoyance at the retelling amused me (we were stoned), but years later I was thinking of Annie when I wrote "Tears Seven Times Salt" (in 1995), and then, again, when I wrote issue #33 of The Dreaming, "Dream Below" (sometime late in 1998). But I expect I'd not thought about that night at the movies, that night when I was only twenty-five years old, in more than a decade.
Last night, after the movie, we read more of Patti Smith's Just Kids. I had a moment of gleeful, triumphant grammar nerdiness when I came to a passage where Smith speaks of a microphone as a mike. This is, of course, the correct spelling, though many people today insist upon the atrocious misspelling mic. Which is exactly like misspelling bike as bic, or trike as tric.
Thanks for the many comments yesterday. It's always good to be reminded I'm not just talking to myself.
Anyway, here's hoping today will be productive...
Here in Providence, we're having a wonderful day of thunderstorms and dark skies. The thunder woke me at 10:30 this morning, but I dozed off for another hour, only to be awakened by the thunder a second time.
Yesterday, I dithered and searched for story. And a very strange thing happened. As the day progressed, "The Maltese Unicorn" began to metamorphose from joke to viable story concept. Some of it was a number of interesting comments to yesterday's blog entry. Some of it was just my brain working a problem. By six p.m. or so, it had blossomed into a full-fledged, slightly tongue-in-cheek story involving the aphrodisiac qualities that might be derived from a unicorn's horn, two rival demon brothel's in 1940s Manhattan, an unscrupulous dealer in occult antiquities named Nathaniel Adler (wink, wink), and...well, lots of other stuff. I was sort of excited and appalled, all at once. I emailed the book's editor and ran the story idea past her, fully expecting to be told that I was right to have wanted to punch myself in the face for having thought it up. Instead, I was encouraged to have a go at it...so...I suppose I shall. The next couple of weeks will be weird, indeed.
Spooky has begun a new round of eBay auctions.
Last night, we watched Disney's The Little Mermaid, which I'd not seen in just about forever. It holds up well. It got me to thinking about the first time I saw it, late in 1989, at a midnight showing in Birmingham. Elizabeth was there, and Jada, and another friend, Annie, who was outraged at the happy ending. Annie went on and on..and on...and on...about how Disney had butchered Hans Christian Andersen's story. That night, her annoyance at the retelling amused me (we were stoned), but years later I was thinking of Annie when I wrote "Tears Seven Times Salt" (in 1995), and then, again, when I wrote issue #33 of The Dreaming, "Dream Below" (sometime late in 1998). But I expect I'd not thought about that night at the movies, that night when I was only twenty-five years old, in more than a decade.
Last night, after the movie, we read more of Patti Smith's Just Kids. I had a moment of gleeful, triumphant grammar nerdiness when I came to a passage where Smith speaks of a microphone as a mike. This is, of course, the correct spelling, though many people today insist upon the atrocious misspelling mic. Which is exactly like misspelling bike as bic, or trike as tric.
Thanks for the many comments yesterday. It's always good to be reminded I'm not just talking to myself.
Anyway, here's hoping today will be productive...