Slugtacular

February 13

I feel peculiarly useless tonight. I moved heavy boxes for much of the day; then worked out; then had a big meal. I'm basically a sleepy, vaguely discontented animal right now. Writing doesn't seem to be happening. I just answered most of my unanswered e-mail, but I now fear that the messages I sent were disjointed or witless. Perhaps I should've chosen a better time to do that; but there just doesn't seem to be time.

Not that I'm so spectacularly busy. I do find time for computer games, after all. And I've had good momentum writing-wise, lately, tonight notwithstanding.

Speaking of which, Deep Outside rejected one of my stories today; my first ever rejection from them. The only other two stories I sent them, they bought... ah, well. Had to miss sometime, I suppose. Kind of a bummer, though.

I'm beginning to think I should've stayed in Berkeley after the gym tonight and gone to a café and gotten a massive caffeine infusion, and then sat down and written in a stimulant-fueled white heat...

I didn't write last night, but I did the necessary research. Did you know that, in some depictions, Tlatecuhtli has mouths on its elbows and knees? Isn't that cool? And that the Aztecs sacrificed twenty thousand people a year, to get the blood necessary to keep the ol' engine of the universe turning, to keep the sun lubricated in its groove? And that they didn't keep livestock, so the main meat source for Aztec royalty was... yup. The limbs of those 20,000 people.

And what does this have to do, you ask, with San Francisco, and poison frogs, and the Japanese tea garden, and rollerblades, and a shimmering cape? You'll have to read the (as-yet-unwritten) story to find out...

So I'm not writing, and wandering aimlessly around the house, feeling far too wraithlike for my own good, unfit for human interaction, sluggish of mind, sleepy, but too awake to sleep. So I dunno what to do. Tried to watch a movie, couldn't even concentrate that much. Played a computer game, found no joy in it. Reading seems to work a bit better... I suppose I'll settle on that as the night's activity...

Tomorrow's Valentine's day. Heather and I are having a night... making dinner together, drinking wine, eating pears and brie, &etc. I'm looking forward to it immensely. Heather's my touchstone, when the world feels too big and whirling-around...

This is neither exciting nor interesting, I know. But that's just how it is sometimes.

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February Solitary Short-Story Dare (now with bonus poetry!)

Total words written: 12,050

Words written today: Nope.

Stories written this month: "Henchman Blues"
"On the Underworld Line"
"Melancholy Shore"

Poems written this month: "Dreaming Apep"
"Poor Bahumut"
"Laughing Blood"





Some sorta refreshing tonic would be appreciated. A patent medicine, maybe, with an absinthe base...

Tim Pratt
P.O. Box 13222
Berkeley, CA 94712-4222





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