About Time
July 18
I'm a healthy, happy boy; all my anxiety has turned to smoke and airy nothing, and my tummy is fine and well. La.
I'm tired, so this will be rather scattershot. Um. Had a rejection from Strange Horizons; they called my story "lyrical and charming," but said they've had to make a lot of hard decisions, so. I sent them another one tonight -- probably the best thing I've written since "Little Gods", though vastly different. Perhaps they'll want it.
We didn't get any mail this week, which we found rather distressing. So today Heather called and complained (very politely, she says), and I came home to find several days' worth of mail crammed into the box -- most of it fairly uninteresting. Then, about half an hour after I got home, the mailman came to the door with a certified letter I needed to sign for, and more mail besides. So apparently someone from the PO made a special trip to deliver our missing mail. One wonders where it was, but I suppose it's okay; it's all here now. Though my copy of LCRW #10 didn't turn up, as I'd hoped it would (the good people at Small Beer are kindly sending me a replacement, anyway, since I should've gotten the issue quite some time ago).
The mailman brought my check from The Year's Best Fantasy & Horror, la, which is nice. That's it for good/interesting mail, though.
I went to Dark Carnival (I have to go there sometimes for work. My job rules) yesterday and bought Ordinary Horror by David Searcy and Thief of Time by Pratchett. The latter has, of course, been sucking up my reading time since then. Pratchett at his best is one of my favourite (British spelling is an homage to him! and huzzah for him winning the Carnegie Medal!) writers, and this is one of his best. Occasionally when reading his novels I find at least one of his plot threads annoying in some fashion, but not so in this case. I'm nearly done reading it, and it's probably my favorite non-witches Discworld novel since, oh, Pyramids. (Any Discworld novel that doesn't include Granny Weatherwax suffers (while I acknowledge that, regrettably, there is not always a place for her in the narrative), but this one, at least, has some good stuff with Nanny Ogg.)
I've been playing Chrono Trigger (the best role-playing videogame ever, which I've completed many times; I spent a summer going through all the different major endings), but I really need to buy a gamepad to continue -- there's stuff I simply can't do with a keyboard. That's the first step down a slippery slope of playing-video-games-all-the-time, though, since with a gamepad I can replay all the Megaman games, play Super Mario Bros. 3 (which is so fun on an emulator, since you can use all sorts of lovely cheat codes). I have a slightly addictive personality when it comes to video games, though, so I may restrain myself. I'm still pondering.
I had a lovely relaxing indulgent fabulous night yesterday; Heather and I had good sandwiches and then frolicked the night away. Marvelous. I have a beautiful, glorious girlfriend, who fills my life with joy and conversations.
Tonight I worked out, and went to Au Coquelet, where I tore myself away from reading Pratchett long enough to write a bit. I'd intended to just write a page or two and then go back to reading, but I fell into the novel headlong. There was so much to say, the ideas and connections coming so quickly and beautifully, I had to get it all down. The result is much-scribbled but... well... inspired. It may not be the best passage in the book, but it certainly came the most easily and enthusiastically. And I pinned down a lot of fundamental details about how the magic works in that world, stuff I've just been vaguely waving my hands about before. Much nicer, now. It's so nice when something you put in a story just because it was cool or weird or interesting turns out to be really relevant, to be important! Such a lovely magical feeling. One of the nicest things about writing.
And that brings you, more or less, up to date.
Words written since February 1, 2002: 114,800
Words written since last entry: 1,600
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