Hardly Jejune

June 2

I can't believe I forgot to mention! Mary Anne gave Heather & I her poem "Beneath the Lemon Tree", the beautiful framed collage! I bought the poem back when I was editing poetry for Speculon, and loved the framed version. I'm so happy to have it hanging (or, actually, soon to hang) on my wall!

I had good news when I woke up this morning. I've sold two more "Bestiary" poems to Strange Horizons, "Plate Spinning" and "Engulfer". I like them even better than the first two poems in the series. Don't know when they'll appear, yet; I'll let you know.

And sad news; Karina Sumner-Smith had decided to stop keeping her journal. She'll be missed. I've loved watching her progress; she's a great person and a truly fine writer. I wish I had half her chops. She can do stuff with words that I can admire and enjoy, but not equal. And she's younger than me! At least I can look forward to reading her fiction for years to come.

I've been working a bit on Rangergirl today (I love this book. I love the characters. Mmm), but it's the afternoon, now, and it's too damn hot up here in my garret to continue. I've gotta take a break from the heat. I'm gonna go read Skin by Kathe Koja for a while.

Okay. Nearly 5 p.m. now, and much cooler. Time for something resembling a re-cap.

Friday night we went out to dinner at Spetto, a funky little restaurant in Oakland. Then we went to see About A Boy at Grand Lake (which is the best theater I've ever been to, an old-fashioned movie theater with curtains over the screens, balconies, floral carpeting, murals and weird mosaics on the walls, bits of antique movie-making equipment in the hallways; the way theaters should be, not at all like the sterile modern movie theaters, which are like airports, more than anything else). Good movie! Then home, where we watched Sex and the City DVDs and went to bed.

Saturday, I got up semi-early and got some stories ready to mail. Then we walked over to Susan's and on to Barney's for lunch (technically a celebratory lunch for my "Fable From A Cage" sale). Mmm. Good burger. Good fries. Good shake. It takes so little to please me! After lunch we returned home, I read for a bit, puttered around. Later Heather and I went to the tea bar to work. Unfortunately, after we'd been there for 5 minutes her laptop stopped working. So we went home again, and she plugged it in, determining that the laptop's fine, but the battery is somehow wonky. After some debate we decided to go out again (I really wanted to get some work done, and knew I wouldn't do so at home), this time to Rolling Dunes, a coffee-shop/creperie that opened a couple of months ago (it's also a desert-themed restaurant, which is funny, being as I'm working on a novel partly about the Old West). We sat outside, which was pleasant, except for the screaming children orbiting us like eccentric moons. I outlined the next 30 or 40,000 words of Rangergirl, more-or-less scene-by-scene, though there are lots of question marks and "Maybe do this" sorts of notes. I'm set for the next few weeks of writing, anyway.

We went to the bookstore on Piedmont, which is pretty good. I bought Skin by Kathe Koja, and Galilee by Clive Barker, because (as usual) I gave my old copy away, and The Encyclopedia of Gods because it was cheap, and one of the Dozois annuals, and the Best American Poetry for 1993, because I'd like to own that whole series.

We came home and frolicked, and went to the Smokehouse for a (very late, like, midnightish) dinner, then watched about half of Traffic, at which point Heather got her sleep on, and we went to bed.

Got up around 11 this morning. Found the SH acceptances mentioned above. Have had trouble focusing today, but have managed to do a fair number of things despite that. We hung up Mary Anne's poem, and I wrote about 1400 words of Rangergirl in the afternoon. I paid bills. I answered all my Star*Line e-mail submissions. I updated my Bibliography page, adding a few links to some older stories, so now there's more to read! I wrote to Jim Van Pelt, who maintains the Campbell Award website, to tell him I'm eligible, now. He says I'll be added, along with other newly-eligible writers, after WorldCon. I read a bit, cleaned a bit, ate some old potato salad, drank a beer on an empty stomach, took a shower, read journals, tapped away at this journal entry, updated my "Writing Expenses/Earnings" sheet (I'm trying to keep real track of this, since I never really have in the past, and I have to file as a writer on my taxes next year), looked at ants in the front yard, and almost took a nap. That about brings you up to speed. Supposedly, Heather and I are going to a coffee shop to work this evening, but she's been gone clothes shopping for a while, and I don't know when she's coming back. We have to go to the grocery store, too, since there's nothing to eat in the house but dry pasta and some quite ancient and frozen pierogis.

We went to Rolling Dunes again, and ate breakfast outside at 5:45 p.m.; very pleasant, in its way. Heather worked on a (wonderfully surreal) short story, and I read. We went to the grocery store, and didn't spend too awfully much money for a good amount of food. Then home again, to watch the rest of Traffic. After that I got a wild hair to work on the house, I don't know why, but such impulses are rare for me, so I indulged it, and Holly and Heather helped. We hung a tapestry, put up curtains, cleaned off the table, moved some of the heaps of magazines out of the way, re-arranged lamps, put a picture up in the bathroom, and generally straightened, and the house is much brighter and more lovely now than it was. A satisfying end to the day; so often I work on nothing but words, words all day at my day-job, words all night at home, and it was a pleasure to do something concrete. I think I see the appeal of working in a garden (not that I'm volunteering to do so).

And this just in, a rejection from Strange Horizons for a story that was perfectly good and successful, but which didn't rise above the others they've lately received. Fair enough.

Words written since February 1, 2002: 78,120

Words written since last entry: 1,400

Send me the title page from Lady Chatterly's Lover that H.G. Wells reputedly defaced.

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

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