Happy To You

February 2

1:00 p.m.

Happy February! The title of this entry comes from something the baby at work says pretty often... we've had a lot of birthday parties lately, with lots of singing, and while the baby can't quite manage "Happy Birthday to you" she can manage "Happy to you!", which is just as adorable as you'd think.

Oh, the pain! A rejection from Horror Garage, with a note that says "Tim -- This was very close. I debated on it for quite some time. Do, please, submit again."

Which is great, except the story I sent them was my best horror story. Of course, that's only in my opinion; and what do I know? And the story I'm working on now is literate, complex horror, as are two of my other upcoming ideas, so... I like Horror Garage, from their psyechedelic-zombie-True Confessions-chainsaw-babe covers to the literary horror on the inside.

Let's see. A reviewer at Tangent Online called "Annabelle's Alphabet" "pseudo-Ballardian -- or perhaps Edward Gorey-esque", which marks the first time either of those characteristics has been attributed to me, la. It's a mixed review; the reviewer thought it was entertaining and thoughtful, but that it would work better as a straightforward story... but in my opinion, it would've been pretty damn dull as a straightforward story. The plot's not exactly complicated. The fun is in figuring out what the hell's going on -- which some people do by letter F, and some never do (the reviewer says the "secret" becomes plain by the letter J, and for him, I'm sure it does; but that ain't true for every reader). In many ways, "Annabelle's" is less a story and more an extended prose-poem... It's also rather annoying that the reviewer gives away the "secret" that the story turns on, which is why I'm not linking to the review.

I guess that's it for other people's opinions... now back to my usual personal-opinion-domination.

Tonight is Heather's birthday party, whee! Nice people coming, and there will be food, and booze, and merriment. I'm looking forward to it muchly.

I was virtuous last night, sitting down at the dining room table to write a bit on the Train story (the working title is "Helljack", but that's just lame, so let's keep calling it the "Train story", shall we?). I wrote 1300 words (that seems to be my default this week)... the story's over half done, I hope. I'd like it to come in under 5,000 words, but that ain't gonna happen; I hope to keep it under 6,000, now. Why do all my stories want to be long? At least it doesn't want to be a novella... I should be grateful for that. It's pretty good, I think... dark and weird and lovely, and every time I sit down to work on it, something surprises me. I'm only just starting to get a handle on the protagonist's deep inner life, but that's okay; I can backfill when I revise, and make him more internally consistent throughout.

Other stuff... I'm looking into grants for the SFPA (which is to say I'm browsing around online). I'm going to apply for an NEA grant, since Star*Line qualifies... $5,000 (which is the low end of the grant spectrum) would solve all our financial problems for a while. Of course, the grants are insanely competitive, and I don't expect to get one, but it's worth a try... If anyone can think of any other grants SFPA should be applying for, or if you have any general advice about this sort of thing (it's all new to me), speak up!

I finished Kissing the Beehive... not my favorite of Carroll's books, but it had its moments. Finished The Tooth Fairy last night... lots of things I liked about it, which I may go into at more length later... mostly I liked how damned weird the fantasy elements were... a lot of fantasy goes too far trying to explain things, I think, when one of the best things about fantasy is the capital-M-Mystery. Joyce understands that...

Hmm. That's enough for now. More later.

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