Dirty Frank's Disco

November 25

It's been a busy few days, full of nice things and nasty things. Nasty thing first, to get it out of the way -- we're so screwed, in a vehicular fashion. We took Heather's car to the shop to get it checked out, and it's on its last legs. Leaking fluids, bad carburetor, worn engine mounts, the exhaust system is shot, etc. It's safe enough to drive to the grocery store and so forth, but we're not comfortable taking it on the highways, and it doesn't get up hills very well, so taking it to work isn't an option. It would, once again, be cheaper to buy a new car than to fix hers. So we're getting rid of both of our cars, and I'm going to be taking the bus to work for a while. Sigh. We may be able to borrow a car from one of Heather's co-workers, which would help while we save up to buy new transportation. Crap, crap, crap.

I know you're all sick of hearing about my financial woes -- I'm sick of thinking about them -- so there won't be any more of that nonsense in this entry, at least...

I received my contributor's copies of the February '03 issue of Realms of Fantasy, and the illustration for my "Fable from a Cage" is absolutely marvelous, just as good as, if not better than, the illo for "Witch's Bicycle". Lori Koefoed painted it, and it's perfect -- the thief looks much as I'd imagined him, the owl is lovely, the cage is wonderful... I'll definitely have to slice the page out and frame it.

(Oh, the illo for "Witch's Bicycle" is viewable online, on artist Michael Kerr's website. The portfolio is flash-based, so I can't give you a direct link to the image, but I'll try to provide a roadmap. Go here: www.wronghand.com/wrong/kerr/kerr.html, then move your mouse pointer below the typewriter, to the row of square boxes under the arrow labeled "Select a Portfolio". Click the third one from the left, which reads "Narrative" when it's highlighted. That should take you to "Bicycle Witch" -- the fabulous illustration for my story)

I also got several nice writerly e-mails in the past few days. One from an editor asking for minor tweaks on a story, which may or may not turn into an acceptance -- that would be nice. One from an editor asking me to send some poems, which I did. And one from a writer I greatly respect, saying really wonderful things about my work, some of it so effusive that modesty forbids me from quoting it here. It's incredibly heartening, though, to know that someone so talented and astute understands what I'm trying to do in my work, and thinks that I'm doing it well.

I managed to get a lot done this weekend, though not on Rangergirl. I wrote a review of Alan DeNiro's marvelous atari ecologues for Star*Line. I also wrote my "letter from the editor" for S*L, and finalized the poetry line-up for issue 25.6, and put everything else for the issue together, and send it off to the guy who does production. I answered a couple of submissions, though I still have a lot of those to get through. I cleaned out my entire inbox, except for one message that requires a longish response. Nick Mamatas sent me the final chapters of his awesome novel Move Under Ground, and I just read it and sent him crits. I read and critiqued Heather's chilling new story "When We Were Twelve". I tweaked the above-mentioned story and sent it off again. It's a relief, getting all that stuff finished... I feel a bit less overwhelmed, now, and can concentrate on finishing my own book, which I hope to have done by the end of the month.

On Saturday, Heather gave me an early birthday present, and we spent the evening wrapped in velvet, watching cartoons, staring into rosebuds, and giggling. As Vonnegutt wrote, "Everything was beautiful, and nothing hurt." Very nice, an experience I haven't had since I moved to California, and that Heather hasn't had in half a decade. It was a joy and a marvel.

Sunday we bought groceries, and coffee, and I did some of the work mentioned above, and Heather made ginger-carrot soup, which is good with bread and butter. Yummy, though it didn't stave off Heather's looming sickishness, which struck forcefully today.

Today, of necessity, I took the bus to work. Not so awful, though I had to get out of bed an hour earlier than usual. The bus wasn't crowded, and I read, and it was fine. I caught a ride home with the ever-generous kest. My boss is out of town, so there's not constantly new stuff being piled onto my to-do list, so I'm getting a lot done. It's nice. We watched The Salton Sea tonight, and it was quite good, with some really marvelous lines. Val Kilmer didn't even overact...

I've been working on this journal entry for two days, so excuse its dis-cohesiveness (I just made that word up, I think -- discohesion!).

Last night I got a rejection from Brutarian, and promptly sent the story to Horror Garage -- only to find out today that Paula Guran was "dismissed" from her position as editor, and Michele Patterson resigned shortly after. So I don't know what's going to happen to the magazine now. Sigh. It's a pretty cool 'zine -- uneven, but they've published some of the best horror around in the past few years. I hope it survives in some incarnation...

In the words of Eddie Vedder, at the end of "Dirty Frank Dahmer", a song which, like this journal entry, lacks a proper resolution -- "Ah, I think that's enough."

Words written since February 1, 2002: 183,200

Words written since last entry:
1,500

Send me a car. Even a haunted car. Even a ghost car that nightly returns of its own volition to Dead Man's Curve. Even a Yugo.

Tim Pratt
P.O. Box 13222
Berkeley, CA 94712-4222

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