All Fine Reasons to Struggle

June 5

My vacation is nearly at an end. I go back to work tomorrow, for the first time in a month. Sigh. I suppose taking 1/12th of the year off work is fairly decadent; I shouldn't complain. It'll be odd, getting back into the rhythm of the daily grind. At the same time, I think it will be nice, settling in again. All the traveling I did this past month was beginning to wear me out, honestly, though I enjoyed it greatly. I'm basically a homebody, so it's nice to be home.

I'm back in Santa Cruz tonight, after a couple of deliriously glorious days in Oakland, with Heather. I didn't realize it, but there's a really lovely downtown area near her house, with coffee shops and a goodish bookstore. I bought Sacrament, the only Clive Barker novel I haven't read. It looks terribly lit'rary, but I thought that about Galilee when I first saw it, too, so I'll give this one a try. I also bought Jonathan Carroll's Sleeping in Flame; I'll probably start reading it soon. Over the weekend I purchased Jody Scott's Passing for Human, the sequel to I, Vampire. Much yummy reading ahead of me.

Timprov BARTed up from Hayward to visit me in Oakland today, while Heather was at work. We went to Gaylord's coffee shop, up on Piedmont, and he drank too-bitter lemonade while I had a vanilla latté. We talked about all sorts of writerly things-- markets, editors, stories, the business. A bit about Speculon, which is going up on June 15th with a new site design and a poetry section. We wandered, got food, browsed bookstores. It was nice to see him again, and spend some time talking one-on-one. Much needed.

Y'all know that Marissa rules. Well, apparently the good folks at Delacorte (a division of Random House) realize she rules, too, because they've requested a rewrite on her novel manuscript Fortress of Thorns. I've had the privilege of reading Fortress, and I have this to say: It's brilliant. I wish I'd written it, that I'd been capable of writing it. It's moving, suspenseful, funny, sweet, innovative, and altogether remarkable. Not unlike its author.

Sometimes I feel so lucky, to be in this place at this time, surrounded by such astonishingly talented and dedicated people. This is as good as it gets.

I got my contributor's copies of the July Asimov's, including my poem "Incident" (the only poem in the issue). I got another good illustration, a lovely whiskered fish drawn by June Levine. I'm a happy boy. It's time for me to send Gardner some more poetry, I think.

Needless to say, y'all should run out and buy the issue, which I think should be on newsstands by now. Or order it from the web site. This is one of my very best most lovely poems ever. You'll like it. If you ever meet me in person, and ask politely or perhaps buy me a drink, I'll recite it for you-- it's the only poem of my own that I know through and through by heart.

I sold a poem, "Mask," to Strange Horizons. The editors debated for a while among three of my poems, and finally settled on buying this one (which I think is the best of the three). It should be out sometime later this month. I'll let you know when, and provide a link, fear not. Though you should be reading S.H. every week anyway, as far as that goes.

Heather is so beautiful. I always think so, but there are moments when her hair falls around her face, or when sunlight touches her so-blue eyes and turns them into jewels, or when she just looks at me in a certain way, when I can do nothing but hold my breath and look at her and listen to the thumping of my own heart. That beautiful. She puts every flower on earth to shame.

Heather treated me to dinner tonight. I had jerk salmon and mashed potatoes and split pea soup. Mmm. We had fish last night too, actually-- Heather worked her lemon-and-butter magic on a couple of salmon steaks, and we had some spinach fettucine and veggies to go with it. So good-- and healthy. Heather's going to be good for me, I think. She did most of the cooking, and while she chopped and boiled and so on, I read her Kelly Link's "Travels with the Snow Queen".

Bliss.

Heather says she thinks I've lost a bit of weight. Which is nice. And I don't think she's saying it just because she loves me.

Heather watched In the Mouth of Madness with me this weekend-- did I mention that? She declared it a good movie. So I chose well. We also watched the end of Rawhead Rex on Sci Fi Channel. Such a terrible movie! I know it's terrible, based on the ten minutes I saw. It's based on a goodish Clive Barker story, but as far as I could tell they really mangled it. The story, while perhaps not precisely feminist, at least appreciates female power, whereas in the movie... well, it's admitted that only a woman can vanquish Rawhead Rex, but at the last minute the stupid man has to come along and hit the monster with a shovel to finish it off. And then the woman collapses into his arms. Heather was more than a little disgusted, ideologically speaking. I might have been similarly disgusted, but I was too busy hooting over the monster-make-up effect that created Rawhead Rex, and the really silly laser-light show magic effects. Hee.

We also watched a good little bit of Pumpkinhead... which was actually better than I remembered it. It stars Lance Henriksen, who of course I love because of his role as Frank Black in the series Millenium (which was brilliant in its first season, though it did go rather to shit after that). Pumpkinhead is a pretty standard horror-movie revenge plot, but the bits with Lance Henriksen and his kid are pretty sweet.

The hour grows late, so I'll stop my rambling. Ta, lovelies.