These People Pressing In On Us Are Many
February 9
11:00 a.m.
Happy Sunday. Not much to report about today so far, as I just got out of bed, but I can catch you up on Friday and Saturday, at least.
Friday night I got sandwiches for Heather and I, as well as a couple of movies. Got Twilight Zone: The Movie for the nostalgia, and because Heather had never seen it. Also picked up Ginger Snaps, a Canadian horror film that Charles de Lint recommends in his Books to Look For column in the April F&SF. Ginger Snaps is the best horror movie I've seen in years, far more intelligently written than most, with the blood-and-gore mostly used to good effect. If the prospect of seeing many eviscerated dogs doesn't bother you, go watch it.
No writing on Friday.
On Saturday, I got up and read some Star*Line slush. Once again I didn't completely clean out the inbox, but I'm making good progress, and I accepted a couple of good pieces. It's so fun being a poetry editor... Then Heather and I walked to Temescal Café, where I revised "Meranhu's Gifts"; it's a good story, and I'll be glad to get it in circulation again. Came home to find a rejection from Strange Horizons; they liked the narrator's voice (which is the story's strength) and the metafictional aspects (which were fun to write), but ultimately found the story slight (which is its flaw; it's cute, but there's not all that much to it). So, la. I sent them another story that's anything but slight; we'll see how that one goes over.
I took a nap in the afternoon, and played some Diablo. Heather and I had our date night, dinner at Tropix (which is insidiously becoming one of our favorite restaurants) and then The Mothman Prophecies. I'm not sure if I liked the movie or not... there were three people behind us babbling the entire time, which made for a distracting moviegoing experience. They were of the "it's a cat!" school of commentary (you know, when a cat appears on the screen, one of them says "it's a cat!" and another says "I had me a cat one time" and so on). They gave valuable insight into the inner life of the characters, like "Dude's tripping!" (though actually they spoke that particular dialect that eschews the regular use of "to be" verbs, so what they actually said was either "Dude trippin'!" or "Dude be trippin'!"). They were the sort of people who, when you ask them to please keep it down, say "Ooh, she told you to shut up" and "Naw she didn't" and don't alter their loudness in the slightest. And one of them actually received a call on her cell phone during the movie, and had a long conversation about the fact that she was in a movie theater, watching a movie, in which a dude was trippin'.
This is what happens when we go to the big theaters. We almost always have a crappy experience in some respect. People in small and art house theaters are much less obnoxious. Ah, well. Those are the breaks. I think the movie was pretty good, though much more logical and linear than John Keel's real account of what happened to him in and around Point Pleasant. It's funny, because there are a lot of loose-ends and weirdnesses for a Hollywood movie, but it ties together ridiculously neatly compared to Keel's account.
When we got home we both wrote, Heather tapping away in her room, me scribbling away at the dining room table. And the accomplishment? I wrote 1,300 words and finished the first draft of the Train story (which is called "On the Underworld Line"; I'm not crazy about that title, but it's better than "Helljack"). I have no idea if this story is any good. I'll tell you next month when I revise it.
Today I had planned to work on the Frog story, but instead I think I'll try to come up with something for an anthology Michael Kelly's editing. Something short, and atmospheric... Not sure if I'll get any good ideas, but we'll see.
That's all for now. I may check in again later.
February Solitary Short-Story Dare
Total words written: 8,650
Words written yesterday: 1,300
Words written today: 0 (but it's early yet)
Stories written this month: "Henchman Blues" Send me a rude-bastard eradicator.
Tim Pratt Join my notify list
"On the Underworld Line"
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