So the revision to the revised schedule needs revising. I’m not up to any promises at the moment. Suffice to say no. 20, “Sun,” won’t be beginning on Monday as noted; I’m not even sure if the next bit of “Moon” will have dropped by then.
One need not rehearse one’s own disappointments, one hopes?
(Those of others, on the other hand…)
At any rate. There are reasons; of course there are reasons. The dead logic board. The ear infection. The post-election ennui; the looming fiscal cliff; the move across town. Words that taste like tinfoil when you put them on the page. The terror that seizes when you get up on the stepladder with the shears to finally snip the thread that holds the other shoe of Damocles: will it actually make a noise, when it falls? Is anyone even listening?
What if all this latency—isn’t?
Mostly if I want to point to something though I’d point to the dam’ script, the third revision of which I just sent off to New York complete with wing and prayer. —Script? —Yes, well. The Spouse and I are collaborating on a young-adult graphic novel for Lerner, part of their “My Boyfriend is a Monster” series, and it takes time, writing 124 pages of comics down. Time that pays.
Which this time doesn’t, so much. —But whose fault is that, really?
That’s pretty much it, for now. It will come. When? I don’t know. Soon? Maybe. It’s dark; it’s cold. It’s also very, very quiet and rather too terribly dry. It’s the Moon.
That’s the best I can do.
Posted 4778 days ago.
There is a kind of Writing, wherein the Poet quite loses Sight of Nature, and entertains his Reader's Imagination with the Characters and Actions of such Persons as have many of them no Existence, but what he bestows on them. Such are F--ries, Witches, Magicians, Demons, and departed Spirits. This Mr. Dryden calls the F--ry Way of Writing, which is, indeed, more difficult than any other that depends on the Poet's Fancy, because he has no Pattern to follow in it, and must work altogether out of his own Invention.
There is a very odd Turn of Thought required for this sort of Writing, and it is impossible for a Poet to succeed in it, who has not a particular Cast of Fancy, and an Imagination naturally fruitful and superstitious. Besides this, he ought to be very well versed in Legends and Fables, antiquated Romances, and the Traditions of Nurses and old Women, that he may fall in with our natural Prejudices, and humour those Notions which we have imbibed in our Infancy. For otherwise he will be apt to make his F--ries talk like People of his own Species, and not like other Setts of Beings, who converse with different Objects, and think in a different Manner from that of Mankind;
Sylvis deducti caveant, me Judice, Fauni
Ne velut innati triviis ac pœne forenses
Aut nimium teneris juvenentur versibusHor.
—Joseph Addison, “—mentis gratissimus Error”
Posted 4835 days ago.
City of Roses by Kip Manley is the closest I came to a really well-crafted, character-driven fantasy.
Posted 5023 days ago.
Saturday evening and we had no plastic eggs, so I walked down to the Fred Meyer to get a half dozen or so imprinted with animal faces and pastel bags of Kit-Kats and sour jellybeans, and I ended up getting a bottle of bubbles, too, because why not. On the way there the sun had been setting, and when I left the store it was almost entirely down, and Hawthorne stretched up away ahead of me into the deepening gloom and at the head of it the far-off colonnade of the Seminary’s front porch catching the last of the light on the ankles of Mount Tabor—and just for a flash, the way you see these things, I saw it: a flickering winding line of candles held in sure and steady hands, a procession making its slow way up the paths there among the trees toward the long-dormant (but not dead) caldera, and I knew how it was all going to end. —Oh, no one’s doom was sealed at that point; those have long since been written down and sealed away in envelopes, days and dates, hows and whys. But what would be done about it, what it’s all going to do to the city: now, with that one glimpse, I know a little more.
Slowly, solely. —Less than a week from the 16th of April. Something will appear here then; something more will appear on days thereafter, but when exactly, which, I don’t know, nor whether it’ll all be done by the 27th as advertised, as promised, sloe, slew, slhoa.
So we’ll set the marker down, here: next week, Monday, April 16th, will see the online première of no. 18, “Dazzle,” with installments appearing, um. Pre-orders? I’ll get back to you on that.
It should all be wrapped up in plenty of time for the “Moon” to come in June. (And so forth; and so on.)
I will be places as well in the next little while. Perhaps I should mention them?
Stumptown and VanCAF will be joint appearances with the Spouse; Readercon and the PZS, I’ll be on my lonesome. I should have at least a couple of books and chapbooks at each of these, and also a warm smile and hearty handshake.
Posted 5025 days ago.
The 9-year-old who discovered The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is genetically identical to the 54-year-old who cannot travel without Calvino’s Invisible Cities and the OCT of the Iliad; if these are not the same reader—if between them lie many, many obsessives to whom the current occupant of the body can never return—the project of improving a book with a view to “the” reader is obviously a non-starter.
Posted 5049 days ago.
The fifth is mawdlen drunke; when a fellowe will weepe for kindnes in the midst of ale, and kisse you, saying, “By God, captaine, I love thee. Goe thy wayes; thou dost not thinke so often of me as I doo thee; I would (if it pleased God) I could not love thee as well as I doo;” and then he puts his finger in his eye, and cryes;
Posted 5057 days ago.
Your eyes do not deceive you; Wednesday’s fit has yet to appear. Tonight; tomorrow morning terribly early at the very latest, with the conclusion to appear not long thereafter. So not so much late as not on time?
—There were some blocking issues. And some last-minute but rather fruitful questions as to motivation. End-game’s a dicey time at best, you know.
In the meanwhile: Joey Manley (no relation) went and interviewed me as part of his series on webserialists, who we are, what we do, why (dear God, why). Go and read it while you’re waiting, if you like. Hints are dropped. Innuendo languidly draped. That sort of thing.
(—I should maybe one day read Steppenwolf, huh.)
Posted 5072 days ago.
Whether moonlight or streetlight or the light that shines beneath doorways, and for that very short time we can finally do what we might: Monday, February 13th, will see the online première of no. 17, “Deliverance,” with installments appearing Monday, Wednesday, and Friday through the 24th. Pre-orders for the paper version should be available within a couple of weeks, and will be announced at that point, along with the track listing.
And then it’s “Dazzle,” due in April—just in time for Stumptown—and then, and then…
Posted 5095 days ago.
Wenn ich Kultur höre…entsichere ich meinen Browning!
Posted 5100 days ago.
Fuck the exposition.
Posted 5110 days ago.
