Egolicious
August 11
2:30 p.m.
I got promoted; I'm an Assistant Editor at A Certain Magazine, now. This does not so much entail new responsibilities as recognize the responsibilities I have been gradually taking on for the past couple of months. Hurray!
UPS is holding my "Fable from a Cage" galleys from Realms of Fantasy hostage. With luck, I'll convince them to leave them on my porch next week...
Mike Jasper has a nice journal entry up now about his vacation last week, and the things he thought about while at the beach, and the conclusions he reached; good stuff, full of valuable reminders about the importance of enjoying yourself. He makes me miss the North Carolina beach, though; I spent a lot of summers vacationing there...
I've been getting a good bit of work done. Friday I wrote about 700 words on a collaboration Heather and I are working on, one that's rather more substantial and meatier than our past collabs. It could be quite good; the pages I wrote are, I think, among the best work I've ever done, on a line-by-line level. Yesterday I wrote 600 words of Rangergirl. I've also read a couple of "Discworld" books, and am almost done with The Darkest Part of the Woods, and I bought and read volume 4 of Transmetropolitan yesterday. Read some short stories in various places, too, because I was in the mood to read short stuff; "Alicia" by Melanie Tem in the Dark Terrors 5 antho is especially good, a very disturbing story of adolescence, power, and family dynamics. I also read Robert Reed's "The Majesty of Angels" in the new F&SF, and thought it was pretty good; I've always had an affection for afterlife-stories, even ones as twisty and things-are-not-as-they-seem as this one.
Now to impose some order on my memory of events... Friday Heather and I spent quite a long time up in Berkeley. She went to the gym after work, and I would have as well, but I had to work an hour late and by the time I got home I had a headache, was starving and cranky, etc., and decided to cut myself a break. So I went up to wait for her at Au Coquelet, where I read and wrote a bit. She joined me, and we ambled up to Telegraph Ave., where I bought The Penguin Dictionary of Symbols and a new "Discworld" book for Heather (though I wound up re-reading it the next day -- I've read the entire series before, except for the newest one). Then we went to a pub/restaurant that has a nice outdoor courtyard and secured a table. We had a nice dinner, marred only by the fact that the kitchen was out of avocado! But the beer was good, and served in enormous frosty glasses, and we had pleasant talk in the dark warm evening. Then we came back downtown, and on a whim ducked into Mel's Diner for dessert -- I had a cherry shake, mmm. We looked things up in the Dictionary of Symbols for fun (does this make us geeks?). By the time we left there, we still weren't ready to go home, and would've gone to see a movie if it hadn't been too late. So we BARTed home, and played videogames, and I stayed up astonishingly late, and that was all.
Yesterday we rose, and frolicked, and then went our separate ways. I went, predictably, up to a café and did some writing. Heather met me later and we went to see a matinee of The Bourne Identity, which was good but not spectacular -- better than most action movies, though. There was an arts festival thing going on, so the streets were filled with musicians of all stripes; very nice. We also saw the street kids with their pets; a kitten and a rat, and a sign that says "Please help us buy cat food and rat food." To which I always want to respond "You know, that problem is actually self-correcting..." But I don't, because that's mean, and I try to suppress my baser impulses. Then we came home, and I made dinner while Heather worked in the garden. We watched half of a dead boring movie called Barcelona, which featured Christopher Eigeman (whom I quite like) in one of the main roles, but even his grouchiness couldn't redeem the flick for me. So we played more video games! La and la!
And today? Oh, heavens, we slept the day away, something that would normally wrack me with guilt -- so much time wasted! -- but I'm trying to be more mellow about these things. You've got to relax sometime, and I've got plenty of time to get work done today.
So I'm going to have some lunch and then start writing!
10:35 p.m.
I wrote 2500 words on Rangergirl today! This evening Heather and I went to the Chinese grocery store (home of cheap vegetables and chicken and fish) and to Trader Joe's (where I bought cheap, but presumably good, wine). We had dinner and watched Angel and generally had a fine old time. And that's about it for the weekend; she'll be missed.
I did my semiannual ego-search last night; here's the interesting new bits (or, at least, bits I didn't notice last time I ego-searched) I turned up.
Interesting review of "The Witch's Bicycle" over on Bluejack's site. And in the bio he has for me, you can see my Clarion photo! (my bit of the group photo, that is.) I still look basically the same. That's sort of reassuring.
Here's a link to my publications in Spanish translation. Olay!
Hmm. Lots of people quoting my Locus reviews. A couple of fansites pirating them whole. Ah, well.
Ooh, here's the Table of Contents for Dark Illuminati #0, which includes my poem "Holly Grove" and some other lovely stuff, including a reprint of my favorite thing by Lucius Shepard, "White Trains". Neat.
Wow! Barth Anderson mentions me in his essay "What a Bunch of Ratbastards", in the same breath with Kelly Link and Ray Vukcevich! Man, that's so nice of him! And it's a good essay. Go read it. I pretty much agree with him, though in truth, everybody else he mentions is a better writer than I.
This is odd. No there there.
And I see that other Tim Pratts are professors, millwrights, firefighters, and, of course, the music reviewer (I actually got a phone call at work intended for him last week, which is funny).
Good night, all.
Words written since February 1, 2002: 134,250
Words written since last entry: 3,800
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