Here begins my pseudo-blog. This will be the master thread, with news, my less expansive ramblings, links to the longer ones, and anything else I decide to throw in. Just because I'll be holding forth, please don't think that comments and discussion are unwelcome here. (It's exactly the opposite: if I don't hear from anyone, I'll assume that no one is reading this and that the experiment is a failure.)
Entry No #1
First of all news:
It looks like the reissue of Goblin Moon won't be available until after the first of the year. Unfortunate, but unavoidable. Trying to publish through lulu and do a professional-looking job when you don't have the same software that professionals do ... well, it turns out to be a messy process.
Fortunately, the people at HarperCollins do know what they are doing (even if I don't know what they are doing) and A Dark Sacrifice remains on track for release in late November or early December. When I figure out which it is, I'll post an excerpt a week or two ahead.
I've been interviewed by an online magazine. For those interested, you can find it here:
http://theopinionguy.com/OGsSpeculativeFictionIssue8.PDF
He asked quite a few questions specific to The Hidden Stars, so it's not just a recap of previous interviews.
****
Articles: None just yet, but I'm working on one about originality and what I think you have to do to achieve it. Actually, I'm editing the article in an attempt to sound less opinionated and pompous . So ... it could be a while.
****
A poem: Every twenty years or so, I write a few. This one seemed appropriate for the season.
Entry No #1
First of all news:
It looks like the reissue of Goblin Moon won't be available until after the first of the year. Unfortunate, but unavoidable. Trying to publish through lulu and do a professional-looking job when you don't have the same software that professionals do ... well, it turns out to be a messy process.
Fortunately, the people at HarperCollins do know what they are doing (even if I don't know what they are doing) and A Dark Sacrifice remains on track for release in late November or early December. When I figure out which it is, I'll post an excerpt a week or two ahead.
I've been interviewed by an online magazine. For those interested, you can find it here:
http://theopinionguy.com/OGsSpeculativeFictionIssue8.PDF
He asked quite a few questions specific to The Hidden Stars, so it's not just a recap of previous interviews.
****
Articles: None just yet, but I'm working on one about originality and what I think you have to do to achieve it. Actually, I'm editing the article in an attempt to sound less opinionated and pompous . So ... it could be a while.
****
A poem: Every twenty years or so, I write a few. This one seemed appropriate for the season.
IN THE RED KING'S GARDEN
In the garden of the Red King,
where corpses hang like rotten apples
it is endless autumn.
The cold but amorous kiss of snow,
the fragrant breath of spring,
the long, rich, simmering days of summer
have slipped from memory.
And in the orchard where the deadmen dangle
like fruit that never ripens
there is nothing but decay,
for all the leaves have withered on the stem,
turned brown and dry and wrinkled like the faces of old men.
The birds and bees, the patient, burrowing moles who tilled the soil,
have fled.
(Even blind, their ears stopped up with clay and loam, they knew.
Perhaps they felt the taste of earth
turn bitter in their mouths.)
A barren wind rattles the sapless branches.
The Red King walks beneath the unleaved boughs
in pallid light of morning, and crimson-tinted twilight.
The nine dead princes in the trees: his elder brothers.
Two more, the youngest, are buried under stone
with earthworms and black beetles
and other little creeping things that sip cold blood.
The King has iron fingernails grown long
and twisted into shapes increasingly fantastic.
His face, once fair, is seamed with scars
and livid as the faces of the dead.
A waxy skin of cataracts obscures his eyes,
like milk left boiling in the pan too long.
He has outlived his time
and each new day bring with it a new torture
of swollen joints and aching, bleeding gums.
The paradox: excess of life had given birth to scarcity.
Something coughs, a little rasping sound:
a lion made of stone that was a fountain,
an age ago in summer
consumptive now with moss and slime,
stained with time, leprous with scarlet lichens.
Once or twice a day it wheezes
and trickles forth a drop or two of rusty water.
Husks of insects, the armor of a dragonfly,
float upong the oily phosphorescence of the pool below.
Yet in a hidden secret place screened by a wall of thorns
a single shoot, green as a mermaid's eye,
born from a seed long dormant,
shudders and unfurls a leaf, a fragile emerald banner.
And one of the dead men hanging in the orchard
begins to stir--
In the garden of the Red King,
where corpses hang like rotten apples
it is endless autumn.
The cold but amorous kiss of snow,
the fragrant breath of spring,
the long, rich, simmering days of summer
have slipped from memory.
And in the orchard where the deadmen dangle
like fruit that never ripens
there is nothing but decay,
for all the leaves have withered on the stem,
turned brown and dry and wrinkled like the faces of old men.
The birds and bees, the patient, burrowing moles who tilled the soil,
have fled.
(Even blind, their ears stopped up with clay and loam, they knew.
Perhaps they felt the taste of earth
turn bitter in their mouths.)
A barren wind rattles the sapless branches.
The Red King walks beneath the unleaved boughs
in pallid light of morning, and crimson-tinted twilight.
The nine dead princes in the trees: his elder brothers.
Two more, the youngest, are buried under stone
with earthworms and black beetles
and other little creeping things that sip cold blood.
The King has iron fingernails grown long
and twisted into shapes increasingly fantastic.
His face, once fair, is seamed with scars
and livid as the faces of the dead.
A waxy skin of cataracts obscures his eyes,
like milk left boiling in the pan too long.
He has outlived his time
and each new day bring with it a new torture
of swollen joints and aching, bleeding gums.
The paradox: excess of life had given birth to scarcity.
Something coughs, a little rasping sound:
a lion made of stone that was a fountain,
an age ago in summer
consumptive now with moss and slime,
stained with time, leprous with scarlet lichens.
Once or twice a day it wheezes
and trickles forth a drop or two of rusty water.
Husks of insects, the armor of a dragonfly,
float upong the oily phosphorescence of the pool below.
Yet in a hidden secret place screened by a wall of thorns
a single shoot, green as a mermaid's eye,
born from a seed long dormant,
shudders and unfurls a leaf, a fragile emerald banner.
And one of the dead men hanging in the orchard
begins to stir--
Last edited:
), but I wish all the other contestants good luck.
