Gleipnir
July 2, again
Hi, darlings. I've had a productive day. I did work, which was busy but rather pleasant. After work I went for my daily constitutional (that is, I walked to the Post Office). No good mail, alas. I came home and made some dinner, then decided to work on my Mr. Li story.
I didn't actually do that. Instead, I polished up a few of my languishing stories and re-submitted them; I have two-thirds of my stories in the mail now, yay! Almost everything that can be submitted has been-- the rest need revisions, except for a few postal submissions that I'll send later in the week. I pulled some stories out of my trunk, too-- "Hatchling," "Hell's Lottery," "Blue Light," and "Pages Torn From the Wanderer's Diary." These are stories that went to some pro markets and got rejected, and I retired them without really sending them to semi-pros-- I'm not sure why. Certainly none of these are my best works, but they're not bad, and I wouldn't be ashamed to see them published. So I sent some of them off to semi-prozines. Three of those four are horror stories, which is nice-- I had almost no horror stories in circulation before today. I haven't even written one in ages, though my next story is going to be horrific.
Jack Fisher at Flesh and Blood gave me a 2-day reject on "Scent of Copper Pennies." He said my writing is excellent, and he wants to see more-- he just didn't think that particular story was right for F & B. Fair enough. With response times and encouragement like that, I'll be submitting to him in the future. Jack's an excellent horror poet, actually...
After the sending-stuff-off, I got sick of sitting in front of my computer, so I went to Pergolesi for coffee. I was a good boy, though-- I printed what I'd finished of my Mr. Li story and took it with me, so I could read over it. I didn't change much-- I think it's good so far. I wrote another 1200 words or so, moving the plot forward greatly. It's not done, but it's very close now, and there's only cool stuff ahead of me, so it'll be fun. Writing longhand really broke through my block on this story. I'm happy.
The slowness of this writing shouldn't surprise me; it took me a long time to write "Dr. Nefarious," too, and "Captain Fantasy" took about six months from beginning to end, just for one draft. I don't know what it is about these stories... they're my most action-oriented stories by far, and yet I work so slowly and carefully on them... I think it makes them good, though.
After that writing, I came home, turned on the idiot-box, and watched a bit of Anthony Hopkins overacting in Coppola's Dracula. Man. What a wretched movie. I saw it shortly after it came out, but I'd really forgotten how bad it was. Big stars and big director or not... it has the production values of a cheesy television mini-series. How do you ruin that story? And yet they have Gary Oldman looking like an undead Liberace for much of the film... at least it has Tom Waits as Renfield; that's something. I must say, though, I prefer Kim Newman's version of Coppola's Dracula better.
Elsewise... You'll be pleased to hear, Heather, that I raised my monitor by 2.5 inches or so-- I hope that helps. I knew that hardback copy of King's Dreamcatcher would be useful for something...
I think this is quite enough entry for tonight. Just wanted to keep you up to date on my writing exploits.
