"...cycling by, through windows of our past lives."
Both The Drowning Girl and my short story "Fake Plastic Trees" have been nominated for the 2013 Locus Award (this makes four nominations and one win for The Drowning Girl).
It seems like a long time since I made an entry here, but I see that it was only Wednesday. A hop, skip, and a jump. Hardly seventy-two hours ago. I'd meant to take two days off. I took four. Well, mostly. There was some spotty work yesterday and the day before. Thursday and Friday. They were uneventful days off, and not even in an especially restful way. Infirmities kept me and Spooky inside, until yesterday. Even yesterday we only made it as far as the other side of town.
Yesterday we went out, to Wayland Square and Angell Street. My goddamn rotten feet are giving me fits again, but I hobbled about, determined to get as much sun as I could. We made it to Paper Nautilus Books and Pow Science and just walked a bit. We stopped in at Acme Video on the way home to get movies for our weekend long Ray Harryhausen film festival. I was very pleased to see the shop had pulled all his films and may a special "R.I.P." display. We began, last night, with 20 Million Miles to Earth (1957), to be followed by It Came From Beneath the Sea (1955) and The Beast from Twenty Thousand Fathoms (1953). Anyway, yes....wonderful yesterday. After the long, foul fucking winter and this Cold Spring, yesterday felt wonderful. Here in Providence, the temperature climbed almost all the way to 80˚F. Today, it's cloudy, very windy, and almost ten degrees cooler, but still, not so bad. The air yesterday - and today - is filled with cherry blossoms, like whirling clouds of pink snow. Almost everything is green now. Which makes the sky a little less heavy. I don't feel quite so pressed down. There are a few random photo from yesterday below, behind the cut.
And here is Saturday, and I have to get back to work. In theory, I'm doing the first four pages of Chapter Eleven of Alabaster: Boxcar Tales today, and then finishing Chapter Eleven tomorrow. In practice, I'm not actually sure what "happens next" in the story. I guess I'll find out. Also, I have to talk (via email) with Jerad at Centipede Books. We're working out an onlay for front cover (cloth), using an etching by Fritz Hegenbart.
I'm reading The First Fossil Hunters: Dinosaurs, Mammoths, and Myth in Greek and Roman Times by Adrienne Mayor.
Spring in Providence.
Cherry blossom on the curb.
A dangerous place.
Angell Street. Once upon a time, the hideous apartment building at far left was the childhood home of Lovecraft. Well, the house that stood there before the hideous apartment building. That was the home to which he spent his life wanting to return. In 1961, three years before my own birth, the gorgeous house was demolished for the apartment building. And then...some asshole dropped this Starbucks across the street. Insult to injury, you know. I'm plotting restroom graffiti revenge.
“The human race is just a chemical scum on a moderate-sized planet, orbiting around a very average star in the outer suburb of one among a hundred billion galaxies.” ~ Stephen Hawking (1995). Lovecraft would have adored that quote.
Now, work.
Conveyer Belt,
Aunt Beast
It seems like a long time since I made an entry here, but I see that it was only Wednesday. A hop, skip, and a jump. Hardly seventy-two hours ago. I'd meant to take two days off. I took four. Well, mostly. There was some spotty work yesterday and the day before. Thursday and Friday. They were uneventful days off, and not even in an especially restful way. Infirmities kept me and Spooky inside, until yesterday. Even yesterday we only made it as far as the other side of town.
Yesterday we went out, to Wayland Square and Angell Street. My goddamn rotten feet are giving me fits again, but I hobbled about, determined to get as much sun as I could. We made it to Paper Nautilus Books and Pow Science and just walked a bit. We stopped in at Acme Video on the way home to get movies for our weekend long Ray Harryhausen film festival. I was very pleased to see the shop had pulled all his films and may a special "R.I.P." display. We began, last night, with 20 Million Miles to Earth (1957), to be followed by It Came From Beneath the Sea (1955) and The Beast from Twenty Thousand Fathoms (1953). Anyway, yes....wonderful yesterday. After the long, foul fucking winter and this Cold Spring, yesterday felt wonderful. Here in Providence, the temperature climbed almost all the way to 80˚F. Today, it's cloudy, very windy, and almost ten degrees cooler, but still, not so bad. The air yesterday - and today - is filled with cherry blossoms, like whirling clouds of pink snow. Almost everything is green now. Which makes the sky a little less heavy. I don't feel quite so pressed down. There are a few random photo from yesterday below, behind the cut.
And here is Saturday, and I have to get back to work. In theory, I'm doing the first four pages of Chapter Eleven of Alabaster: Boxcar Tales today, and then finishing Chapter Eleven tomorrow. In practice, I'm not actually sure what "happens next" in the story. I guess I'll find out. Also, I have to talk (via email) with Jerad at Centipede Books. We're working out an onlay for front cover (cloth), using an etching by Fritz Hegenbart.
I'm reading The First Fossil Hunters: Dinosaurs, Mammoths, and Myth in Greek and Roman Times by Adrienne Mayor.
Spring in Providence.
Cherry blossom on the curb.
A dangerous place.
Angell Street. Once upon a time, the hideous apartment building at far left was the childhood home of Lovecraft. Well, the house that stood there before the hideous apartment building. That was the home to which he spent his life wanting to return. In 1961, three years before my own birth, the gorgeous house was demolished for the apartment building. And then...some asshole dropped this Starbucks across the street. Insult to injury, you know. I'm plotting restroom graffiti revenge.
“The human race is just a chemical scum on a moderate-sized planet, orbiting around a very average star in the outer suburb of one among a hundred billion galaxies.” ~ Stephen Hawking (1995). Lovecraft would have adored that quote.
Now, work.
Conveyer Belt,
Aunt Beast