4 Dollars and 1 Penny

June 20

I've gotten various bits of writing-related money this week (actually, this week I've gotten more than a third of what I made off writing for the entirety of last year) -- not a lot of money in an objective sense, but the equivalent of, oh, a couple weeks of day-job pay, and thus of great significance to my life. The benefits are many and obvious -- I have a savings account again! I can pay Flytrap contributors this weekend, and pay for printing the 'zine in a few months! I can buy the new Radiohead CD! I could buy the new Harry Potter book if I wanted to, though I don't!

Anyway, I have a question for you readers. One of the bits of writing-money I got was royalties for one of my stories, paid into my PayPal account. The amount? $4.01. So, I ask you -- what can I buy online for $4.01 or less? Preferably something good. I'm taking suggestions by e-mail or on the comments board.

Is there Little Gods news? You bet your proverbial sweet bippy there is. First: My picture and bio are up on the Prime website: http://www.primebooks.net/authors/author_detail.asp?author_ID=47. I sent them to Sean, and about six minutes later they were online. I suspect Sean Wallace is actually an ongoing quantum event, rather than a mere ordinary editor. Heather took that photo this afternoon, in the garden.

Second: We have cover art! Check it out here. It's called "Lost Forever", by an artist named Arcipello. I'm quite fond of it -- Sean sent me several possibilities, and I liked that one best, and he got it for me! It's a lovely innocence/experience picture, reminds me thematically a lot of "Annabelle's Alphabet", and there's all sorts of wonderful stuff in the junkpile under the little girl's feet, from snakes to robots. It'll be a wraparound cover -- should look just yum-lovely. The artist is selling prints (of this piece, and various others) here.

I've begun the awkward blurb-seeking process. Eep. I hate bothering people. But on the other hand, it's a great excuse to ask writers whose work I love to read my stories...

There are roughly a million things I've been meaning to write about, but haven't. Somehow I doubt I'm going to cover all of them today. I will say, though, that the best thing about being home is being with Heather again. Before I went to Rio Hondo, we hadn't spent a single night apart since the day I moved in. It was hard, being away from her -- harder than I expected. We've spent a lot of hours since on the couch together, in bed together, sitting upstairs in my garret together. So, herewith, three particular things I love about Heather Shaw:

The adorable typos in her journal entries (Colon froth!), which remind me of Anne Sexton's assertion that god is a typewriter, and that typing errors are messages from the muse. Also the fact that Heather doesn't get annoyed when I discover said errors and giggle about them compulsively.

The way she sings with me. We have quite a little repertoire at this point, though we're getting rusty on the Xander/Anya duet from the Buffy musical -- we haven't done it in a while, and last time we tried, we dropped a whole verse.

The way she welcomes me home when I've been away, with little gifts to tell me she was thinking of me all along.

I've read some good stuff by Neil Gaiman lately -- "The Monarch of the Glen", his new story featuring Shadow from American Gods, which will be in the next Legends anthology. Just lovely, and makes me hunger for Anansi Boys; I'd like to spend more time in that universe! The best thing about "Monarch", for me, was the appearance of characters from another Gaiman story, one of my favorites. But I'll stop there, lest I give anything away. I also read "A Study in Emerald", the lead story in the new Sherlock Holmes/Lovecraft anthology Shadows over Baker Street. I've read about 2/3s of the anthology, and that's the best story I've read yet, full lovely twisty bits. Gaiman gets a surprising amount of power out of the premise, and explores its possibilities more thoroughly than most of the other contributors. It's been a good Gaiman week.

I've got a nice big pile of other books to read, too. Everyone in Silico by Munroe. Face by Lebbon. Nekropolis by McHugh. China Mountain Zhang, also by McHugh, and which I thought I'd read in college, but upon buying a copy, it doesn't look familiar, so I wonder what book I was thinking of? Uncanny Tales by Sheckley, for review. A doorstop's worth of William Hope Hodgson, theoretically for review, though I rather doubt I'll be able to get through it -- his prose tends to overpower my reading abilities.

At work this week I've been cutting back trees, and hauling brush, and cutting up branches into firewood, and cleaning up millions of slowly rotting plums. This is the sort of thing that happens in between issues, you see. The weekend is very welcome. My arm hurts from all the sawing...

Words written since February 1, 2003: 67,550

Words written since last entry:
0

Buy Floodwater via PayPal! $5, includes shipping. Or send a check payable to Heather Shaw to the PO Box below.

Charles de Lint says it's worth reading! Are you calling him a liar? Huh?