The rain will surely win the race

[sovay]

1. I slept about four hours last night. Most of them were taken up with dreaming of children's books in a nonexistent library. I chalk this up to my recent Bellairs binge and a desire to seek out Frances Hardinge, who I believe has slightly more objective reality than the authors I dreamed about. The night before last, asleep for a rare twelve hours in the wake of the pre-Code marathon, I dreamed I was behind deadline on a Lovecraftian script treatment. I woke up and thought, "handful_ofdust . . . ?"

2. Yesterday's primary social engagement: meeting my new Strange Horizons co-editors, ajodasso and rinue, for cake and conversation at the Danish Pastry House. We talked about poetry. We also talked about the folklore of tomatoes and our feelings toward root vegetables of the UK. This thing where we all live within driving or public transit distance of one another is fascinating. We have plans.

3. Vonda McIntyre's The Moon and the Sun (1997) is finally being filmed. I repeat: PETER DINKLAGE PLEASE THANK YOU. (And hey, after Game of Thrones, maybe someone with a bankroll will even agree with me.)

It is pouring rain, steadily and undramatically; I do not foresee doing very much with the next twelve hours besides working and trying to recharge. I would like to be writing, but it's one of those days when I feel like someone erased the inside of my head. Have a Roman shipwreck. I like the shipwright's lost brush, the sailor who dropped his name into the sea. I'd missed the olive stone in Silchester.

Comments

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

(I know you meant the previous entry, which I am going to read next break, but SHIPWRECK)

why are shipwrecks so beautiful?

[sovay]

why are shipwrecks so beautiful?

I don't know, but I find them so. Partly I think it must be the sea-change, partly the way, being unplanned, they let you in on the past: unopened jars, dropped coins, timbers with the marks of sail and strain on them, all things you can handle, not just read about, time that is close enough to touch, but never recover.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I love the ribs of ships. They are so graceful, so fundamental, so strong and yet so vulnerable. They're tragic but powerful.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

our feelings toward root vegetables of the UK

What are your feelings towards root vegetables of the UK? (This is, obviously, relevant to my interests.)

[sovay]

What are your feelings towards root vegetables of the UK?

I don't seem to have much to say to the swede or the turnip and my affection for the beetroot is primarily founded on borscht, but I have this idea rushthatspeaks and I should make another parsnip cake in the near future and I would never have known how much I like celeriac if schreibergasse hadn't thrown it one visit into an epic meat pie. Carrots are fun, even if they don't (oh, propaganda) actually allow you to see in the dark. I can't remember if we got to discussing burdock. I drink it with dandelion when Fentiman's is in season.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Hmm. Do you eat haggis? Bashed neeps is the apotheosis of the swede, and I seldom see a need for it otherwise.

And have you tried chocolate beetroot cake?

And celeriac is awesome. I urge you towards soup. Also slaw, with carrots and a hand-made mayonnaise.

[ajodasso.livejournal.com]

We decided that parsnips are grand, but swede not so much. There was general agreement that beetroot is nice, and also carrots.

(Having a partial nightshade allergy, I'm very lucky that tomatoes and peppers are on my fly-list, whereas potatoes and aubergines [eggplant] are not.)

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Parsnips are splendid! Roasted is best, but curried and souped is fine too. And cake, as observed. What else can we do with parsnips?

[handful-ofdust.livejournal.com]

Which Lovecraft, or could you tell? I've always wanted to do a version of The Thing on the Doorstep that'd restore Asenath Waite to her central position as the Ligeia of Lovecraftia. (Also, is her husband Edward Pickman Derby supposed to be related to Richard Pickman?)

[sovay]

Which Lovecraft, or could you tell?

I think it was a story that didn't actually exist: I remember it on the model of "The Colour Out of Space" or "The Whisperer in Darkness," with a central weird event whose investigation becomes itself a vector of the weirdness. Scholar-protagonist, setting seaside New England. It was a period piece, which was slowing me down. That part is completely realistic.

I've always wanted to do a version of The Thing on the Doorstep that'd restore Asenath Waite to her central position as Ligeia Lovecraftia.

. . . would buy from seller.

Just saying.

(Also, is her husband Edward Pickman Derby supposed to be related to Richard Pickman?)

I always assumed so. There's the Nathaniel Derby Pickman Foundation in At the Mountains of Madness, too.

[strange-selkie.livejournal.com]

I told you to watch where you put your snack. Now all these years later you go and stymie a bunch of archaeologists.

[sovay]

I told you to watch where you put your snack. Now all these years later you go and stymie a bunch of archaeologists.

I am sticking you with this poem-seed, sorry.

[strange-selkie.livejournal.com]

Don't look at me; I ordered the honey-smothered dormouse onna stick. You wanted the olive plate, you didn't want to wait until we got to Eboracum to eat... That whole trip was a mess, really. I mean, the drastic end of that bathing beauties contest at Aquae Sulis! And you wonder why I won't get into a car now with anyone but my wife.

[ap-aelfwine.livejournal.com]

I told you to watch where you put your snack. Now all these years later you go and stymie a bunch of archaeologists.

I'd wondered if there were something like this as soon as I read:

I'd missed the olive stone in Silchester.

Nicely done, both of ye!

[strange-selkie.livejournal.com]

Thank you! Thank you! We're here all week! Try the cockatrice.

[ron-drummond.livejournal.com]

I'm delighted to hear the news about a film version of The Moon and the Sun; thank you for the links. What a terrific novel! What a potentially great film! I had the honor of reading the screenplay version and a draft of the novel-in-progress and commenting on it. Later, Vonda thanked me in the book's acknowledgments -- I've been thanked in many books for editorial assistance, but that was the first time anyone ever thanked me for providing musical help! Which was more thrilling than I can begin to say.

[sovay]

I had the honor of reading the screenplay version and a draft of the novel-in-progress and commenting on it. Later, Vonda thanked me in the book's acknowledgments -- I've been thanked in many books for editorial assistance, but that was the first time anyone ever thanked me for providing musical help!

I didn't know that! That's wonderful. (Indeed, there you are. Congratulations!) In an ideal world, you could consult on music for the film.

I've always wanted to read the screenplay; it's one of the few books I've read and thought I would prefer—as originally intended, apparently—as a film. How does it differ from the finished book?

Tomato Folklore

[ashlyme.livejournal.com]

I have to ask about this...

By the way, have you eaten parsnip crisps? They're lovely.

Re: Tomato Folklore

[sovay]

I have to ask about this...

The belief that tomatoes were poisonous, or could be used to summon werewolves, that sort of thing. Lycopersis actually means "wolf-peach." cucumberseed wrote a very good poem on this theme.

By the way, have you eaten parsnip crisps? They're lovely.

I never have! I'll look for them. I like sweet potato chips very much.

[marlowe1.livejournal.com]

rinue is an editor at Strange Horizons? Cool.

Well if anything it should mean a review of King David and the Spiders from Mars since you are both in it.

[sovay]

Well if anything it should mean a review of King David and the Spiders from Mars since you are both in it.

I saw her name in the latest e-mail: I approved.

You should send a copy to the review department whether we're in it or not!

[ap-aelfwine.livejournal.com]

1.

Interesting dreams, as always. Do you remember any of the authors' names from the library you dreamt of?

2.

Sounds lovely, all of it. You're lucky to have that Danish Pastry House nearby--kringler and crêpes are both lacking where I live.

3. Vonda McIntyre's The Moon and the Sun (1997) is finally being filmed.

I hope they do right by it.

I hope you've been able to recharge, at least a bit.

I would like to be writing, but it's one of those days when I feel like someone erased the inside of my head.

I know the feeling. I hope matters will improve before too long.

Have a Roman shipwreck. I like the shipwright's lost brush, the sailor who dropped his name into the sea. I'd missed the olive stone in Silchester.

Thank you for both of these.

It's nothing like as compelling, but here's a shipwreck near where my parents came up. I'm hoping it might still be visible in October when I'm there for my uncle's wedding.

[sovay]

Interesting dreams, as always. Do you remember any of the authors' names from the library you dreamt of?

No, but there was some very good stuff with deep-sea illustrations in the style of Holling Clancy Holling.

It's nothing like as compelling, but here's a shipwreck near where my parents came up.

Dude, even hundred-and-fifty-year-old shipwrecks are still cool. This one looks particularly like the remains of a sea monster: all those snapped ribs and shattered spine.

[houseboatonstyx.livejournal.com]

OT, but this perhaps might interest you. By Vachel LIndsay.
http://www.fullbooks.com/The-Art-Of-The-Moving-Picture.html

[sovay]

OT, but this perhaps might interest you.

I'm not even sure I knew this existed!

The cabinet of Caligari is indeed a cabinet, and the feeling of being in a cell, and smothered by all the oppressions of a weary mind, does not desert the spectator for a minute.

The play is more important, technically, than in its subject-matter and mood. It proves in a hundred new ways the resources of the film in making all the inanimate things which, on the spoken stage, cannot act at all, the leading actors in the films. But they need not necessarily act to a diabolical end. An angel could have as well been brought from the cabinet as a murderous somnambulist, and every act of his could have been a work of beneficence and health and healing. I could not help but think that the ancient miracle play of the resurrection of Osiris could have been acted out with similar simple means, with a mummy case and great sarcophagus. The wings of Isis and Nephthys could have been spread over the sky instead of the oppressive walls of the crooked city. Lights instead of shadows could have been made actors and real hieroglyphic inscriptions instead of scrawls.

VACHEL LINDSAY IF YOU HAD DIRECTED A GERMAN EXPRESSIONIST ISIS AND OSIRIS I WOULD HAVE GONE BACK IN TIME TO SEE IT ESPECIALLY IF CONRAD VEIDT WAS INVOLVED HOLY BLAP.

. . . I think I am interested, yes.