Killian's Blog/Website/Whatever

For those of you who have been worried: I'm returning to Jamie*. Seems I can't work on anything else. Every short story I started was pretty much either (a) drunk owl vomit or (b) secretly about one of the characters in the novel. Yes, I realize this is a direct departure from my "I'm totally going to write a bunch of stuff and submit it OMG" perspective of only last week, but you cannot control the timing of a revelation. When the time is right, the time is right. Plus, working on the novel today feels a lot less like pulling teeth than the work I was doing last week, and I'm pretty sure one's "dream job" should only feel like pulling teeth if one dreams of being in dentistry. In other news, I got some books from Powells today! (Hooray! for online-purchasing!) Just for the sake of accuracy (because Daniel thinks I'm going to claim to have read it before it won**): Yes, I had heard some reliable mumblings about Jennifer Egan's bo...

Today I have a cold. It is not a super heinous cold, but it gave me a wickedly sore throat, a remarkably consistent low-grade headache, and has compromised my ability to remain sane, so it's done its job. Since I don't have the energy (mental or physical) to work on my mystery (let alone stories that might be submittable and thereby help me earn my keep), I thought I'd write a lame little blog post--in an attempt to, I don't know, redeem myself? Prove that I'm totally worthless today? Bah. I would, though, like to share that I have discovered the wonders of cayenne pepper. I've supplanted my daily black tea intake (I average 6-8 cups a day, because I am a fiend) with a concoction of very hot water, about 7 whole cloves, a quarter teaspoon of cayenne pepper, a tablespoon of honey, and a splash of lemon juice. Cayenne, in addition to helping people with cleanses and diets, seems to be more effective for me than most medicated cough/throat grossness from the stor...

You wouldn't know it by looking at my Word Docs, but I'm working like a crazy person today. Instead of following my usual routine of Wake Up, Breakfast, SAD lamp, Write, Write, Fret, Loaf About, Write, and Loaf More, I am doing the sort of research that I had been neglecting because I am a notorious 'fraidy cat. Wait--what sort of research could possibly scare me , the Queen of Trivial Knowledge? Well, the not-trivial kind. The kind that you have to do when you want to remain self-employed. Ugh. Business terrifies me. It does not help my case one little smidge that I am an introverted borderline-hermit. Meeting new people makes my palms sweaty; "networking" is not a term that fills me with joy. Self-promotion makes me feel like an intellectual prostitute--a very desperate prostitute. Blegh. But there's really no avoiding it. Writing stories is as much about taking chances as...bungee-jumping. Or something equally risky with (potentially) great pay-off....

I finally finished The Satanic Verses this morning. Daniel asked if I was going to blog about it--a question which took me a few minutes to process because my brain had just been rendered useless by its encounter with what I like to call genius . Salman Rushdie I'm not going to summarize plot for you. I'm sure as heck not going to discuss THEMES, because Flannery O'Connor and I share similar views on that nonsense (and, appropriately, I would not do Rushdie's work any justice by trying to distill its importance--he did a smash-bang job of making story and ideas nigh inseparable). What I'm going to tell you is that this book was written impeccably by a person with great respect for (or at least sincere fascination with) history and religion/myth*, with wonderful command of various languages (which he worked together/played off each other seamlessly, though I wish I knew any Hindi at all), and who had a story worth telling. And yes, I did cry at one point. Now...

Apparently, I am fond of titling blog posts "Things I Have Learned Today". My previous entry (which I just revisited) was from back when I was trying to write a paper on the Gragas Laws.* (nostalgia)** Oh, undergrad ! Such a funny time. (/nostalgia) Aaaanywho, I'm learning lots of new stuff today, too! Coincidentally, most of it has been difficult to find on the internet, rather like widely-available research on viking ethics.*** Actually, a lot of today's learning is only somewhat resolved--like the discovery of a mystery. I'd probably be frustrated if I didn't find an occasional challenge dreadfully exciting. --First: algae and prokaryotic cyanobacteria are two different things! Wow! Algae is not just pond scum and slippery green bits that stick to your toes. It's like wee baby seaweed! In fact, seaweed is algae! Very complex algae, but still. That's news to me.  Algae: not just the stuff that causes red tide and KILLS YOU Anywho, the...

At just about 6:30 this morning, a transformer exploded outside our window. A bright light flashed through our blinds, accompanied by a resounding boom. I'm not sure whether the light or the actual explosion woke me up, but for one whole second--having suffered yet another set of apocalyptic nightmares*--I thought we had just been bombed and we were definitely, in a matter of seconds, going to die. I was frozen, a deer in the headlights, a cornered rabbit, all I could do was wait for what I knew would be painful and horrible and oh, fuck. God, I'm not ready to die yet . Awesome, right? Daniel, not having woken up in the middle of an apocalyptic nightmare and also being a gent of sound reason, said, in a sleepy and relatively unconcerned voice: "A transformer probably blew." At which point, the panic faded into relief/terror/a right cornucopia of other feelings, and I completely lost it for about ten minutes. In summary, I do not like bombs. I do not like to think abou...