Building a Better Flytrap

April 13

10:30 a.m.

Ah, Sunday morning, when the sky is bright, the clouds are fluffy, and I hunger for a brunch I cannot afford to eat. This is, truly, god's day.

Saturday was very rainy, yet pleasant. We drove up to Berkeley in the morning. Heather did yoga, and I went to Rasputin music, where they had all the Cake CDs one could wish for available used -- I got Fashion Nugget, Prolonging the Magic, and Comfort Eagle for thirty bucks.

Then I stepped out of the store into hammering rain. It had been gray and damp and drizzly all morning, but this was a real honest downpour, the likes of which I've seldom seen on this coast. I actually had an umbrella, so I didn't mind the gray skies, and I ambled along Telegraph and through campus, the only discomfort coming from the sometimes ankle-high water, quite cold on my sandaled feet. When I got down around Shattuck, the wind was really whipping along, turning my umbrella inside-out, spraying water all over me, etc., so I ducked into Café Elodie for coffee, and because I was supposed to meet Heather there eventually. I had a sandwich and read more of The Five of Cups, tried to figure out how I'd review it -- it's nowhere near as good as Kiernan's other two books, but one can see a lot of the roots of her later work in it, and it's certainly interesting if you're a Kiernan fan... of course, I guess Kiernan fans are the only ones likely to buy a small-press limited edition like this anyway, right? Right. So that can be the focus of my review.

Heather arrived when she finished with yoga, and then we went home to do (fun fun! not really!) our taxes. Fortunately, when you make as little money as we do, there are tax-preparation sites where you can file for free online (they charge for people less poor than we), which is relatively painless. I was pretty good about keeping receipts (and keeping track of how much I made writing last year), so I had all the info on hand. Filing over a 56k connection with a tendency to hang was annoying, but it only took me a couple of hours, which included time for me to crawl through FAQs and figure out what situations applied to me. (Like the discovery that I have a home office! I mean, it's not like I have a bed in my garret or anything -- all I do up here is write, and I spend at least an hour or two every day up here doing exactly that. Which wasn't a huge deduction, but it helped). I wound up owing about $40 to the federal government, which isn't so bad, and I'm getting $20 from the state. So, whoo. Heather did hers more quickly than I had, since she'd been sitting there with me while I figured out which weird things applied to me, so she didn't have to look up things as often.

And next year, we'll do our taxes in January. Totally. I'm dead serious. Right.

The rain had let up a bit in the afternoon, but by the time we needed to leave for the party in the city, it was really coming down again, and neither of us relished the prospect of dealing with Bay Bridge traffic in the downpour, so we decided to skip the party. Which is a bummer, since I could've used the research for the next major setting in the Frog book, but, hell, I've been there before, and I do remember it well, so it should be fine. We decided to go see a movie instead, somewhere close to home, and, lo! Adaptation was playing at The Parkway, the greatest movie theater on Earth. $5 tickets, and pizza and beer, and couches to sit on. Just the brief drive to the theater was harrowing in the truly awful rain, thus reassuring us that we'd made the right choice in not trying to cross the bridge. We got there just as the box office opened, and Heather snagged us a good couch while I ordered pizza and a pitcher. We chatted, and drank, and watched the movie (which I really liked, maybe even loved).

Then home, and more-or-less to bed. It was a good Saturday, with taxes only a brief blip of unpleasantness.

Let's see what today brings, hmm?

8:45 p.m.

I wrote for a bit, then convinced Heather to go get brunch (she was luckier with taxes than I, and has some money coming back, so we decided we could splurge), so we went to Mama's and stood around for 40 minutes in the intermittent rain, then had a pretty divine meal. We had to run various errands (buy coffee, razors, etc.), which culminated with Heather buying a mattress (we've been sleeping on a futon lo these past years), something she's wanted to do for ages. It's being delivered tomorrow night. Whee!

Heather went to buy shoes and so forth, but I stayed home, intending to write. A hundred words later I decided it was nap time, and slept for a couple of hours. Sundays are nice. You can do things like that on Sundays.

Heather came home, and I woke up, and decided I should take a walk, since the weather had turned lovely. Heather came with, and we promenaded to Piedmont. We bought guacamole and ice cream and garlic bread at Piedmont grocery, and came home to have a dinner of chips & dip. We watched Skipped Parts, a very odd yet strangely charming movie. (In which Drew Barrymore had a bit part -- not unlike her bit part in another weird movie, Donnie Darko. I wonder if she had anything to do with producing Skipped Parts? Sweet Drew seems to have an affection for odd little films...)

Now Heather's sending off her last Flytrap responses, and I'm keeping her company...

She gave me a nice silver(y) picture frame a few days ago, to hold a little color print-out of the Kabuki Frogs, created by our hovercraft-like printer (that is, the pritnout was created -- not the Kabuki Frogs). The frogs go well with the book I'm writing. Heather's amazingly sweet. And beautiful; I got captivated by her face earlier tonight. I'm lucky to have her.

And now, what you've all (well, some) been waiting for: The table of contents for the first issue of Flytrap (alphabetically, since issue order isn't set yet):

Stories:

Gabriel Edson, "Rain"

Susan Marie Groppi, "Ladybug Summer"

Derek James, "Carving"

Michael J. Jasper, "Never, Inc."

Jay Lake, "Like Cherries in the Dark"

Jen Larsen, "Sifting in the Dust"

Jenn Reese, "Spidergirl"

Karina Sumner-Smith, "She is Elizabeth Lynn Rhodea"

Greg van Eekhout, "Fishing, I Go Among Them"

Poems:

Alan De Niro, "Indestructible" and "Wolf, with Saint"

Daphne Gottlieb, "boring things the living do"

Tracina Jackson-Adams, "The Elder Daughter's Tale"

Jen Larsen, "Make Your One Night Stand Last Forever with Voodoo"

Sonya Taaffe, "New Blood"

Maria Garcia Tabor, "Desire"

Jay Wentworth, "Volvo to the Beach"

Plus the first installment of what will be a regular column, "Life Among the Obliterati" by Nick Mamatas. And reviews (of books, and music, and, well, anything else we feel like reviewing)! And Automatic Writing! And artwork! And perhaps other surprise treats (maybe even fiction or unclassifiable oddities by Heather and I). Mmm, that's a good Flytrap. And y'all only gotta wait 6 months to read it... We'll have another reading period -- with open submissions, this time -- this summer. Dates will be announced once we know them...

Words written since February 1, 2003: 31,400

Words written since last entry:
600

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