After a lot of procrastination I've just begun a new novel, (the one which, all things being equal, will follow Smoking Poppy) and an interesting thing happened on the first day. There is a problem with reporting it, too: namely that I make up these things for a living. Were I to be abducted by aliens for the obligatory and traditional inspection of the back passage I would be unable to report same because it's too near the stuff I write. No-one would believe it was anything other than a bid for publicity, and quite right too. But the following is possibly credible to you because of its smallness. The working title for the new novel is called The Seven Sisters, and it's about the kindness and madness of women. It is very loosely based on my grandmother, who was a seventh child of a seventh child and who did indeed have not healing powers but frequent prophetic dreams. My Mother, in turn, was her seventh child.
When I start a new novel I like to feel well, up for it, balanced. The first things I write, even if these later prove not to be the opening of the novel, have to be written under a following wind. I'm ridiculously sensitive to portents and omens. Irrational and stupid, I know, I know. Anyway, I had a great start, and after a sound morning's work I hit the wordcounter as I always do. It said 777.
It felt like the happy alignment on a fruit machine. But weird and intoxicating.
All things being equal. This phrase, used above, is an expression my Mother uses frequently. She got it from my Grandmother. I haven't got a clue what it means, but I like it. I know what it is >intended< to mean, but things never will actually be equal unless we revert to the primordial soup.
Other stuff: I completed two short stories over the summer. One called Black Dust for a Subterranean Press chapbook. This is a ghost story about miners. The other is a piece for an anthology triggered by the artwork of JK Potter. The artwork contains a picture of a nude Poppy Z Brite, but sadly from the waist down she's all scorpion. I've never met the talented and no doubt charming Ms Brite, but I had a great time over the summer doing things to her. Though some creatively perverse decree from the muse allowed her to get her own back in the story.
Steven King's On Writing is about to be published here in the UK, and I'm thrilled that in it he recommends The Tooth Fairy. I've been interviewed a lot recently on the back of the BFS Indigo award, and several journalists have picked up on the King interest. 'How does it feel to be recommended by the best-selling author in the history of the world?' is the common question, to which any reply has to be hubristic or sick-making humble. So I've taken instead to raising one eyebrow and offering gnomic utterances, like 'When the snow falls, the world is white' or my favourite, 'Moab is my wash-pot and over Edom will I cast out my shoe.' Followed by a dark wink. I have no earthly idea what these things mean any more than I understand the expression 'all things being equal' but I am yet to be challenged.
World Fantasy Convention in Corpus Christi coming up at the end of October. Looking forward to that, and to meeting up with friends I don't get to see often enough.
Meanwhile my daughter Ella, a mere 4 years old, just started school. Even the state-run infants' schools in England have school uniforms, and to see her in her little togs took a huge bite out of my heart. It's too soon! In Northern Europe kids don't start school until the magic seven. What's more their kids achieve significantly better educational targets later on in life. Four! The playground. The horror.
And Ella is an agent against pride. She was playing with the BFS award I won for Indigo, dropped it on the floor, and the statue rolled from the plinth. I looked at her. 'You can glue it,' she said. 'And anyway, what does it do?'
GJ
