Stoked Locust

February 27

My story "Bone Sigh" is on the Stoker preliminary ballot! Whee! It's a good year for award-stuff. I'm happy "Bone Sigh" has gotten such a good response -- I'm very fond of it, and I like to think I created something genuinely creepy and affecting in the narrator's deadened-deadpan voice. The final ballot could be pretty impressive -- there's some marvelous stuff up for the award...

In other writing-news, I managed 500 words yesterday. A short-short about a goat; not a stand-alone story, but part of a series of linked short-shorts Heather and I are collaborating on (and have been gradually collaborating on for, oh, a couple of months). It's a pretty good short, I think, and if all else fails, I can send it around as a story by itself. I'm quite fond of linked short-shorts; Harlan Ellison does it especially well, as in "Eidolons" and "From A to Z in the Chocolate Alphabet", and Jane Yolen did nice work in that vein with "The Barbarian and the Queen: 13 Views". (Greg is trying to decide what to do with just such a semi-series he wrote recently. I don't know if they're a hard sell or not. If the one Heather and I are doing doesn't sell, it can be the spine of our next holiday chapbook...) Otherwise, not much to report, except a rejection from Sci Fiction for the collab I did with Nick. I sent it elsewhere immediately, in a rare burst of efficiency.

Last night we went to a dinner hosted by Mary Anne and David. An amazingly lavish spread of Indian food, and much good company. I especially liked the spicy shrimp (and, indeed, I ran away with all the leftover shrimp! ha ha ha!). Nice, and good conversation all around, but Heather's back hurt, and I wanted to get some work done, so we left somewhat early. Tonight we snuggled, and frolicked, and talked, and re-connected, which is always nice. She's worth paying all my attention to.

I'm between books, which is a bummer. I finished Sirens and Other Daemon Lovers. I have Picoverse (free books! it's Nebula season!), but it's merely okay, and not really grabbing my attention. Heather's reading the Straub-edited Conjunctions, and I'll get that when she's done, but that doesn't help me now. I'm re-reading Outside the Dog Museum, pleased to find I still love it as much as I did the first time. But I'll be done with it in a day or two, tops. Might be time to hit the bookstore... or else borrow stuff from Susan! I am a book-locust.

Happy Thursday. Good night.

Words written since February 1, 2003: 9,400

Words written since last entry:
500.

Stories written this month:

• "Living with the Harpy"
• "Helljack" with Mike Jasper
• "Winter on the Pyre"

Poems written this month:

• "Nidhigg" (Bestiary poem)
• "Ts'its'tsi'nako" (Bestiary poem)