Santa Cruz in the Morning
May 30
Good, yawn, morning, lovelies.
Ah, the bliss of being home. I've been through O'Hare airport so many times in the past week that at the Starbucks across from the Brachiosauraus in Concourse B they just look at me and say "The usual?"
Well. Not really. But you see what I mean. I'm tired of traveling. I was tired of being away from home. I stepped into the heat of San Jose yesterday and sighed in contentment. When I actually got to Santa Cruz, saw my house (the flowers have grown so much!), saw that my car hadn't been towed away as a derelict, saw the destroyed house next door still not entirely finished, ah, that was delight.
Lots of piled up mail (including a newsletter from the Scientologists! What did I do to deserve that? Mike, Elizabeth, did listening to your stories about the creepy cultists get me put on some kind of hit list?). I had many many checks (from Jackhammer, Kinships, Neverworlds and the guv'mint), which makes me happy. I had a friendly rejection from Weird Tales. Bills. A book from D3 Press, sent as my prize for winning third place in the Electronic Runes poll a while back. The book is their first publication, they're a new small press; it looks pretty good (physically, anyway; I can't speak to its quality as of yet). I think I'll send the editor at D3 a collection of short stories and speculative poems; she said she'd be willing to consider such a thing. I still have lots of stories out, and lots more I need to send out... and there are a few editors still holding things. I should get some responses in the next couple of weeks. Which leads me to think about reading my own slush pile, for Speculon, oy...
I brought so many books home! Probably around a hundred paperbacks. Not all my books, but all the best of the smaller ones. So now I have all my Sturgeon again, and Lansdale, and Etchison, and Bryant, and Effinger, and Barker, Newman, Kessel , de Lint, Willis, Tuttle... yum yum. It soothes me so much, psychologically, to have these books back. And a few of my funkier reference works, Drawing Down the Moon, a book of Western history/legends (good for Rangergirl!), some of my Hinduism stuff, some crime stuff. Of course, I don't have enough shelf space, which is a problem. But I could have worse problems.
Yesterday I finished Hoffman's A Red Heart of Memories. A beautiful very good book. It's too early for me to be more coherent, but I liked it very much.
Heather gifted me with a goat! I forgot to mention that in my last entry. It's a most psychedelic goat, and I love it, and its name is Goat the goat. If I ever write my story about the magic black fire-breathing goat, and that goat has a name, I may re-name Goat. But until then, Goat is a goodish name.
Hmm. I have slush to read. Two short stories ("Battering Jack and the Headless Man" and "Little Gods of Grief", working titles) to finish. A novel to write. Hmm. I should be productive sometime soon.
Plan for today: Visit Timprov and Marissa! Visit Heather! Whee!
Plan for right this minute: Post this entry! Brush my hair! Go get a bagel!
It's good to be home.
