"Out there amongst the waves, and inside your lover's head..."
Religion isn't the opiate of the masses. It's the placebo. ~ Gregory House
---
This is your daily reminder that you need to preorder the hc of Alabaster: Wolves today, or there may not be anymore Alabaster comics. And if there are no more Alabaster comics, I'll never get around to all the Dancy/Maisie kinky.
---
I'm not even going to bother with my usual digs at "Columbus Day." I'm not in the mood to denigrate holidays that wave flags celebrating the onset of a genocide that would eventually encompass an entire fucking hemisphere. Oh, wait...
Yesterday, I wrote the first 1,337 words, and began Chapter Five ("Ungrateful Dead and Sexing the Green") of Fay Grimmer. I meant to do other work stuff, too, but I didn't. I'll try harder this evening. Motivation isn't at an all time low. Just low.
Maybe it'll be better this evening. Because I should be proofing the galley pages of Blood Oranges, working on some...stuff I can't talk about yet, finally getting Aunt Beast's Salt Marsh Home Companion running, and there's an interview. Dog, I'm sick of interviews. I've started turning them down, mostly. Anyway, yeah. I at least need to do the day's March and get through the first chapter or two of the galleys.
Meanwhile, here is the final cover for Blood Oranges. I know there's some confusion on the subject, but I actually do like this cover. The first one we got for the book was unspeakably bad (I'll include it in a later post), but my agent and editors went to bat for me and we got an entirely new cover that actually, you know, has something to do with the novel. And isn't butt ugly. My only kvetch was I wanted the drop of blood to be a messy smudge, but I lost that round. Sometimes you eat the b'ar, and sometimes the b'ar eats you. Anyway, behind the cut, because it's big:
By the way, to quell another point of confusion, I do not hate this novel. It's this novel's sequel, Fay Grimmer, that's giving me fits. Oh, there's plans for a third Kathleen Tierney. Let's not think about that. But this book, BLood Oranges - though it's nothing even remotely like The Red Tree or The Drowning Girl: A Memoir, it's fun. Mostly, it was fun to write. It's a popcorn book. It's funny. It's a satire with an undercurrent of bitter disillusionment. It's candy bars with razor blades hidden inside them. It gives the middle final to "paranormal romance" and its corruption of urban fantasy. So, yeah. I do not hate this book.
Why is it published under a pseudonym? I believe I just answered this question. By the way, that's the actual Providence skyline, as seen from the Point Street Bridge.
---
Read two stories yesterday evening, both from The Book of Cthulhu II (poor neglected Dostoyevsky). The first, Molly Tanzer's "The Hour of the Tortoise" is an utter, ribald delight. I would expect no less from her. Of course, while in keeping with the tone of the story, ribald is far too tame a word for this pornographic romp. The second story was Christopher Reynaga's "I Only Am Escaped Alone to Tell Thee." A story which only goes to prove that all writing rules are, ultimately, useless. Yes, even mine. Did I not just recently exclaim that "less is more"? Well, that's a conditional "rule," just like all "rules." If you're going to take on so ambitious a task as a Lovecratian retelling of Moby Dick, you have to give yourself quite a bit more space than four pages. 'Cause that's some epic shit you're undertaking. Sometimes, less is just...less. As in, not enough.
Yeah, platypus, I know. Time to make the doughnuts.
Oh Fuck,
Aunt Beast
---
This is your daily reminder that you need to preorder the hc of Alabaster: Wolves today, or there may not be anymore Alabaster comics. And if there are no more Alabaster comics, I'll never get around to all the Dancy/Maisie kinky.
---
I'm not even going to bother with my usual digs at "Columbus Day." I'm not in the mood to denigrate holidays that wave flags celebrating the onset of a genocide that would eventually encompass an entire fucking hemisphere. Oh, wait...
Yesterday, I wrote the first 1,337 words, and began Chapter Five ("Ungrateful Dead and Sexing the Green") of Fay Grimmer. I meant to do other work stuff, too, but I didn't. I'll try harder this evening. Motivation isn't at an all time low. Just low.
Maybe it'll be better this evening. Because I should be proofing the galley pages of Blood Oranges, working on some...stuff I can't talk about yet, finally getting Aunt Beast's Salt Marsh Home Companion running, and there's an interview. Dog, I'm sick of interviews. I've started turning them down, mostly. Anyway, yeah. I at least need to do the day's March and get through the first chapter or two of the galleys.
Meanwhile, here is the final cover for Blood Oranges. I know there's some confusion on the subject, but I actually do like this cover. The first one we got for the book was unspeakably bad (I'll include it in a later post), but my agent and editors went to bat for me and we got an entirely new cover that actually, you know, has something to do with the novel. And isn't butt ugly. My only kvetch was I wanted the drop of blood to be a messy smudge, but I lost that round. Sometimes you eat the b'ar, and sometimes the b'ar eats you. Anyway, behind the cut, because it's big:
By the way, to quell another point of confusion, I do not hate this novel. It's this novel's sequel, Fay Grimmer, that's giving me fits. Oh, there's plans for a third Kathleen Tierney. Let's not think about that. But this book, BLood Oranges - though it's nothing even remotely like The Red Tree or The Drowning Girl: A Memoir, it's fun. Mostly, it was fun to write. It's a popcorn book. It's funny. It's a satire with an undercurrent of bitter disillusionment. It's candy bars with razor blades hidden inside them. It gives the middle final to "paranormal romance" and its corruption of urban fantasy. So, yeah. I do not hate this book.
Why is it published under a pseudonym? I believe I just answered this question. By the way, that's the actual Providence skyline, as seen from the Point Street Bridge.
---
Read two stories yesterday evening, both from The Book of Cthulhu II (poor neglected Dostoyevsky). The first, Molly Tanzer's "The Hour of the Tortoise" is an utter, ribald delight. I would expect no less from her. Of course, while in keeping with the tone of the story, ribald is far too tame a word for this pornographic romp. The second story was Christopher Reynaga's "I Only Am Escaped Alone to Tell Thee." A story which only goes to prove that all writing rules are, ultimately, useless. Yes, even mine. Did I not just recently exclaim that "less is more"? Well, that's a conditional "rule," just like all "rules." If you're going to take on so ambitious a task as a Lovecratian retelling of Moby Dick, you have to give yourself quite a bit more space than four pages. 'Cause that's some epic shit you're undertaking. Sometimes, less is just...less. As in, not enough.
Yeah, platypus, I know. Time to make the doughnuts.
Oh Fuck,
Aunt Beast