The Ex Occidente site is currently experiencing turbulence. I've notified the publisher and website manager that there's a problem, but it seems it's not fixed yet (I'll have to try on another computer to make sure).
There's a "reported attack site" warning; the diagnostic page is here. From what I can gather reading the information there, a third party has tried to knobble the site in some way:
Has this site acted as an intermediary resulting in further distribution of malware?
Over the past 90 days, www.exocccidente.com did not appear to function as an intermediary for the infection of any sites.
Has this site hosted malware?
No, this site has not hosted malicious software over the past 90 days.
How did this happen?
In some cases, third parties can add malicious code to legitimate sites, which would cause us to show the warning message.
For those wishing to buy All God's Angels, Beware!, you can now also buy it from online retailers:
I have a story called 'Tzimtzum' in the Ex Occidente Meyrink anthology and another called 'The Gwyllgi of the Lost Lanes' in the Haunted Histories anthology. They're both fairly long stories. The former is really more like a novella.
I should also have some stories in Postscripts (about three), but I don't know when.
The new collection is at the printers. Presumably the page for it on the Ex Occidente website will be updated soon. Before long it will be unleashed upon the world.
The details of All God’s Angels, Beware! have now been finalised. The cover and interior frontispiece are shown below. The contents will be as follows:
Troubled Joe The Were-Sheep of Abercrave Ynys-y-Plag Karakasa A Cup of Tea Asking For It The Fox Wedding Mise en Abyme Italiannetto Suicide Watch
The frontispiece artwork is: "The Lovesick Man" (1916) by George Grosz
A limited edition chapbook of tales that did not make the final contents due to considerations of book size will also be made available at a later date. This chapbook will be free to those who have ordered the book already, or who order it pre-release (pre-order). Details of the contents and so on of the chapbook are to be confirmed.
A new story of mine - 'Suicide Watch' - has just been posted at Thomas Ligotti Online. Many thanks to Dr. Bantham for his work in formatting and so on.
For those who prefer not to read from a screen, the print version is here.
If one goes to the re-listen function for Stuart Maconie's Freak Zone (available for 4 more days) one may be able to hear the song It Is There, from Euston Piret and Lidwine. At the end of the song, mention is also made of myself. As far as I understand and can judge, this augurs (the possibility of) some of my collaborative work with Kodagain being played on the show.
It Is There starts at 18 minutes and 20 seconds in.
The other day - I won't give the exact date - Mr. Wu, notorious on this blog, sent me this fascinating link comparing Hannah Montana and Ziggy Stardust.
Losing sleep recently considering the indifference of the universe to the fate of human beings, as individuals or collectively, and the probable collapse of civilisation in the near future due to a 'cluster-fuck' of such factors as shortage of potable water, overpopulation, the end of oil, 'global financial meltdown', the increasing risk of new epidemics of the bird flu variety, famine caused by general ecological disintegration, increasing ferocity and frequency of tornadoes and tidal waves, the rise of sinister bunkered Dr. Strangelove technocracies who will encourage and take advantage of the chaos to genetically create a race of labour-slaves and sex-slaves to serve their every Kurzweilian whim, and so on, I decided that I should follow the example set in the above link by comparing myself closely with the popular writer of 'young adult' vampire romance fiction, Stephenie Meyer.
Age
SM: 36
QSC: Uncannily, I, too, am 36, though not for much longer. I'm just a few months older than Stephenie. Although, logically speaking I am actually dead. I work this out as follows: I am so soon to be 37 that I might as well just say I'm 37 rather than 36. If we extend this principle, we see that there is so little difference between 37 and, say, 76, from the point of view of eternity (and it is impossible to isolate a moment in time, anyway, since they slide each into the other), that, really, I might as well just say that I'm 76. From which, it's only a very short step to saying, that, after all, I'm dead. Which I am.
Sex
SM: Female
QSC: Fauxmosexual. (Both these words begin with an 'f'.)
Dreams
SM: Meyer's first novel, The Waning of Late Afternoon into Something a Trifle Melancholy and Portentous, was apparently based upon a dream she had about huge pika from the planet Rachel Bilson, locked into eternal conflict with a race of many-breasted 'Amazonian' sea-slugs.
QSC: I am nothing but a dream within a dream. I don't know why I bother to write at all, in that case; it seems redundant. Having said that, I seem to be trapped within a peculiarly prosaic dream. I mean, it must be a prosaic dream in which I dream that the main activity of my existence is to try and record dreams in writing.
Britney Spears
SM: Bears an uncanny resemblance to the Louisiana-born chart-topping sensation.
QSC: Ditto. A resemblance marred only by a slightly larger nose, and glasses.
Tattoos
SM: Meyer reportedly has a tattoo under her left armpit of the Devil's child being born from a demonic vagina. The 'child' in question has been carefully rendered in such a way as to bear a ghostly resemblance to Robert Aickbon, whom, it is rumoured, visits Meyer in a secret place every full moon in order to impart privileged knowledge concerning the future of consciousness and its manifestation in matter. Those who have witnessed these trysts from a distance speak of what appears to be a steed, or familiar, belonging to the Aickbon figure, in the form of a preying mantis with luminous pink eyes.
QSC: I have two tattoos, of anime characters.
Anti-human/Anti-life
SM: On her website, Meyer proclaims herself "anti-human":
I am not anti-female, I am anti-human.
QSC: When, on occasion, I go out for a stroll, and strangers yell and spit at me from their cars, or when I find, yet again, that someone holds Dawkins as their 'hero', or when I discover that all I love is loved by no other on Earth, and I see mediocrity worshipped in a frenzy, I, too, find myself wishing personally to bash in the skulls of every human being on Earth with a rock from the roadside, to free the universe at last from the presence of this scum, this trivial, aggressive, self-celebrating scum who will never understand the beauty of dream - wishing to pile corpse upon bloody corpse, before wiping my crimson hands on my coat and walking away into the wilderness. In this way, perhaps more than any other, I am very like Stephenie Meyer.
I have already posted some links in a previous entry, but some more articles related to Shrike have now gone online. There are three new articles in all.
The first of these is a review by Joy Silence from the LiveJournal community, Darkling Tales. The review is well-written and favourable, although there are some minor spoiler elements in it. If you're sensitive to spoilers, you might want to read carefully. (A friend advised me that he had skipped bits when it looked like he might be getting into spoiler territory.)
I've no idea whether there will be an 'All About Shrike, part iii'. It's possible.
It's been interesting reading the different reactions reviewers have had to the novella. I wonder if I'm less sensitive to criticism than I used to be. I suppose I've never had a review that totally panned something I'd written, anyway, but I have been a bit miffed with one or two reviews in the past. I'm quite straightforward in that I prefer good reviews to bad, but I think I've been more able to enjoy the actual variety of reaction this time around. The experience of perfection - which must be subjective, I suppose - is rare in human life, it seems. It bothers me less than it used to that what I write is not greeted uniformly with that experience in others. Life is a messy business, after all. To paraphrase Denton Welch, I can only go my own sweet way.
Actually, I have reason to be vaguely cheerful. It appears that the dust-jacketed version of Shrike has completely sold out. It was only released this month, so that's quick. I am very surprised. Clearly the interest in my work is in no way represented on the Internet, because I can't say I've detected much sign of it, until this, which just goes to show, there's a whole world out there that has not been ushered into the officially sanctioned immortality (oh yeah?) of digitally encoded information.
Anyway, thank you to all those who bought dust-jacketed copies, and thought it was worth paying extra. Thank you, in fact, to anyone who bought any copies at all.
Oh, if anyone knows where I can get hold of a copy of the dust-jacketed version, let me know. I meant to buy a copy for a friend that deserves it (sounds like punishment, doesn't it?) and never dreamed it would have flown so soon.
I think Shrike is an understated piece, and I'm very happy with that, but for those of you who hunger for something bigger, madder, over the top and just more... I do have plenty in store, believe me, if only I can get the publishers interested. I wrote Shrike in the summer of 2006. I've moved on in my writing since then, and I feel impatient to unleash my latest work upon the world. Some of that, of course, will be in the collection All God's Angel's, Beware!, but there are other and larger things, too. I really haven't even started as a writer, yet, believe me.
It might be a shame really, what with everything else coming to an end right now. It seems like bad timing.
I must always be ready to take leave of this world.
I intended to wait until most of the publicity I can expect for Shrike is actually out before gathering it together in one blog post, but it looks like I'll be waiting a while for some of it, and there's already a reasonable amount out there on the Web now, so, I'll gather together those bits that I'm aware of now, and do the later bits at a later date.
First of all, there are two interviews, here and here, the first on the blog of Charles A. Tan, a writer located in the Philippines, and the second (conducted by Justin Isis) on the blog of Edmund Yeo, Malaysian writer and film-maker.
I've just noticed that at the PS Publishing newsroom, Paul Raven has put up an item about the Bibliophile Stalker interview and kindly describes me as "surprisingly modest". Oh no... I think that the second interview will probably destroy such an impression.
I'm expecting at least one more (and possibly three more) Shrike-related interviews to appear on the internet sooner or later. That is, I've conducted one more that should be up in a month or two, and have been told that one or two other people may be interested in interviews. We shall see.
Now, for the reviews. To my knowledge there are three on the Net so far. I'll do a quick Google, just to make sure... Can't see any new ones. So, here are the three I know of:
Because I haven't mentioned it much, it seems at least one person thought I might not be aware that I have a forthcoming book listed on Romanian publisher Ex Occidente's website. But, yes, I'm quite aware of it. I've held back on announcing anything until details of the book's contents and so on were finalised. As a matter of fact, with regard to my own collection, there is still the possibility that some of the information about it is not accurate. If possible, the collection will contain twelve stories, as given in the information, but depending on printing demands, and other factors, one story may have to be dropped. I also believe the cover art currently showing will not be the actual cover art, although I quite like the cover as it's shown at the moment.
I sent my 'acknowledgements' to the publisher yesterday, so I think I now have nothing more that needs to be sent. I believe that all that needs now to be done is for my texts to be proofread (again), formatted and sent to the printers.
I'm very much looking forward to this collection coming out, perhaps more than anything I've previously had published. One's view of one's own work tends to change with time, but at present I believe this to be my best collection. Not all of it is new material. (If only the demand for my work was that high that everything I got published was new!)
'Troubled Joe' was written two or three years ago now. 'The Were-Sheep of Abercrave' was written last year, as were Ynys-y-Plag and Karakasa. These two are slightly longer pieces, and will represent the fastest turn around I've ever had between writing something and having it in print. I was revising them right up until, I think, early this year. 'A Cup of Tea' was written two or three years ago now, and was previously published in Postscripts. 'Asking For It' was written some years ago now - probably in 2002, if I remember correctly - and was previously published in the second Chimeraworld anthology. 'Sado-ga-shima' was written, again, about three years ago. Can't remember. It was previously published as a stand-alone chapbook by Rainfall Books. The Fox Wedding was written fucking ages ago. I think it must have been about 1998, maybe longer ago. That sounds about right, though. I revised it a little for this collection, and changed the title, because the previous title - Foxy Lady - was shit. I think it was published online by Redsine for a while back in nineties, but it has long since disappeared from the Net. The Meat Factory is a piece that has never previously been published in English, but only in German translation. This, too, was written ages ago. Probably even before The Fox Wedding. What's more, I had the idea for this story years before I wrote it, when I was an A-level student, horrified at factory farming, the meat industry and so on. Friends of mine have read this story and hated it, I have to say. I have a soft spot for it. The publisher liked it, too. Mise en Abyme has kind of been published before, in that I spent hours and hours cutting and pasting (literally, to those of you who are too young to realise that this originally referred to an activity involving paper, scissors and glue)fragments of the story into the front of copies of the chapbook The Psychopomps and Others, thinking I'd provide my readers an interesting experience in trying to piece the story back together again, only to find that - apart from two people who deserve medals - no one gave a shit. I have mixed feelings about this story being included in the collection, as I wanted to sacrifice it entirely to that experiment. Therefore, if any story is pulled from the collection, personally, I'd rather it was this one. Anyway, this story was written just before The Psychopomps and Others came out, whenever that was. 'Italiannetto' is something I wrote last April. It's never been previously published. Justin Isis has done a 'remix' of it that might pop up on the Internet sooner or later, though. 'The Broadsands Eyrie' is something that I wrote unexpectedly under compulsion when last I visited my home in Devon, last summer. This one seems to be the main candidate for a story to be pulled, if that becomes necessary, though I'd rather it was kept in.
Please look forward to reading this monstrously swollen collection.
One or two people have asked me privately what's happening with Shrike, and it's possible others out there, who haven't asked me, are wondering. So, I've been scouring the Internet for signs of Shrike's advent, and know that at least two people have read it. This evidence being confusing rather than conclusive, I asked myself why I didn't just write to the publisher to enquire what the situation was. The answer, of course, is that, perhaps like most writers, I don't like to be a pest. Anyway, I did write, and I have information that Shrike will be published in the next few weeks.
The entry for pre-orders on the online catalogue still doesn't have the blurb up, but the blurb does exist on the Internet, here. I do wonder if lack of blurb has contributed to low pre-order figures. Just in case it will go towards rectifying that in any way, I will reproduce the blurb here:
Brett Stokes is already middle-aged and yet feels that his life has not begun. In an attempt to make sense of his existence he travels to the provincial town of Ôtani in Japan, hoping that, through his writing, he will obtain the insight that he lacks. But in Japan it is late autumn and, closeted within the garden of the lately widowed Mrs Kunisada, Stokes finds the motley collection of arboreal reds and yellows working upon his imagination, until reality itself becomes spectral.
As the strange season unfolds, and Stokes meditates upon the meaning of life, death and literature, the power of the Shrike gradually takes centre-stage.
In this startling novella, Quentin S. Crisp fuses delicacy with darkness and pathos with terror, creating a blend of Japanese and English literature that is as deeply moving as it is unique.
I was suprised, a day or two ago, to discover that there is already a review of my forthcoming novella, Shrike, online. After the initial surprise, my first reaction was to think about including a link to it in a blog entry. Then I decided not to. The reasons for this were probably two-fold. First of all, I don't really want to post a link to every single thing about me that ever appears on the Net. Not that it would be especially time-consuming to do so. On the contrary, perhaps it would serve to show up the paucity of information on me, and the paucity of interest in me. I don't mean, in me as a person, of course. There's no reason on Earth why anyone should be interested in me as a person. I merely mean interest in me as a literary genius.
Secondly, well, I'm afraid that if reviewers become conscious of me watching them then they will become self-conscious about me generally, not just as reviewers, but also as readers, and I suppose it's the last part that I really care about. I wouldn't want to get in the way of their reading experience by my personal (if rather ethereal) presence as a person. And a reading experience, after all, is not limited to the time spent with the book open in front of you.
As you see, I've changed my mind, and posted the link, and I don't really know why. Or not entirely. In part, however, it is because this rather surprising review fascinates me with the glimpse it gives me of the fact that my work does exist for other lives out there - to me, somewhat fugitive and phantom lives - in the most unexpected of times and places (and usually undisclosed ways). Over the years I find that I have been read not only in a number of countries in the Anglosphere, but also in those countries outside this zone, whose inhabitants are less daunted in their reading by texts in foreign languages, countries such as Mexico, France, Denmark, Romania, Belgium, and, for all I know, Uzbekistan.
For the sake of such readers, I sometimes consider giving up my blog entirely. It seems like it can really only be an unnecessary embarrassment. Occasionally people even write to me who have read my work. Heaven only knows what they must think when I write back. It must be even worse than reading my blog.
I'm actually pretty busy at the moment. I'm sure people won't believe me when I say that, if for no other reasons than 1) I still post entries here and 2) I don't mention in those entries much of what is happening in my actual life, so that people may form the impression that nothing is happening at all.
Well, things are happening. Or, at least, things are keeping me busy. Some people see that as a good thing. "Keeping busy? Good. Good." And so, often, misunderstandings occur if people ask how I've been, and I say, "Busy." I seem to be someone who, perhaps for physiological reasons, needs an extraordinary amount of time for private reflection, and what some might call 'wool-gathering'. I am a kind of cetaceous marine mammal to whom such reflection is air.
I'm getting off the track a bit. This post is meant as another kind of 'busy-back-soon' note on the door. Which is not to say I won't be in here from time to time, just that, well, I might not respond as soon or as expansively as I would like to communications and comments. I mean, you take all this for granted, anyway, don't you? I'm the only one who actually thinks I have to tell you this, aren't I?
Anyway, although I'm quite far from being a workaholic, I think my being busy at the current time is symptomatic of good things rather than soul-crushing things. I shall not say what those things are now. If, by any remote chance, anyone should be curious, then I'm sure those things will come out in the course of time, barring disasters, such as a sudden and unexpected attack of death, or something.
But to get down to business, as the title of this blog entry suggests, there are various things I wanted to post here by way of news and diversion and general bloggishness to give readers a reasonably pleasant 'watch this space' kind of feeling.
First of all, news, or should I say, vague rumour: All indications are that Shrike is progressing towards its release. I do not know the exact release date, but will let the details be known when I can.
Secondly, Mr Wu kindly made me aware that Mishima Yukio's short film, Yuukoku, or, Rite of Love and Death, has now been released on DVD, and may even be viewed online. I have taken the latter option, and it is, indeed, a jean-creaming piece of heavy, full-on art. Bowie tried doing the whole Renaissance man bit, but has mainly failed to convince outside the arena of music (though I'm very fond of The Man Who Fell to Earth), and I can't think of many other modern artists (popular or otherwise) who have even made much of an attempt, let alone succeeded. Mishima was bona fide.
Thirdly, oh, I seem to have forgotten. I felt sure there was something else. Oh yeah, I'm going to see Leonard Cohen on Saturday. That's at least one more thing I wanted to say, and if my busyness will at all permit it, I might report back here.
There might have been something else, too, but I've forgotten.
The Next Day...
I knew I'd forgotten something. I posted a link to it before in the comments section, but thought I should post a 'main page' link, too. A while back on Chomu I put up an essay I wrote called 'Useful Parasites'. I wrote it with a particular magazine in mind, but, perhaps appropriately, it was rejected. I'm really very (figuratively) footsore from peddling my wares to publishers who keep one waiting - sometimes for years - only to say 'no', so I put it up on Chomu immediately it was rejected. Since then, on Chomu, there has also been a piece by Brent Peterson, and it's good to see our little stable of writers gradually widening, though it's a shame that so far it is full of stallions, with no mares, except nightmares.
I realise Chomu is a bit irregular, in more ways than one, but would like to encourage people to keep checking back, as we are putting up new things in fits and starts, and don't always makes announcements. There are at least four 'serial' pieces that will be continued (I sincerely hope) at some point, too, namely, 33 Ways of Winning at Life, Who Would Have Thought that a Girl Like Me Would Double as a Superstar?, Scramble City and The Dream Cycle, and if that doesn't keep you occupied until I can fully retutn my attention to this blog, I don't know what will. Incidentally, I am also hoping to serialise my temporarily shelved novel of invertebrate ambition and excess, The Sex Life of Worms, on Chomu at some point. I've honestly got quite a lot on.
I am in the early stages of a very exciting musical project with the band Kodagain. I'm providing lyrics for a new album. The projected title for the album is Letters from Quentin - a suggestion that was generously made to me and with which I'm not in the least inclined to argue. The lyrics will either be my original work, or translations of the poetry of Kaneko Misuzu (I suppose it's possible that I might translate someone like Hagiwara Sakutaro, too, but I don't know if I have my copy of his work with me at the moment). The music and recording will be by Saša Zorić Čombe (and others?). Kodagain are my new favourite band, so I feel very lucky to be invited to collaborate like this.
I don't know how long the album will take to complete, but further news can be expected here as and when. Some of the songs might be made available online. In fact, some of them already are (four to be exact). My current favourite of these, is the latest, Purple Loosestrife.
I've just discovered my school reports from the school I attended between the ages of five and eleven, an undistinguished primary school in the country. Would you like to hear some of it?
Well, school reports are, I think, generally bland, partly by design, so as not to alarm the parents, and partly because teachers have so many of them to write, and simply wish to get the job over with.
The first sheet in the folder, chronologically, records my first year at school in class 7, and my age is given as 5 years, 3 months. There are four categories under which comments have been written:
BASIC SKILLS, LANGUAGE, MATHEMATICS AND READING After a week or two of unsociable behaviour, Quentin has now settled down very well. He has a good appreciation of number and has started formal reading. He has had great difficulty with writing and drawing, but his determination to communicate on paper is overcoming this.
PLAY AND CREATIVE ACTIVITIES Loves all creative activities.
PHYSICAL ABILITY Despite his size, he performs very well in the gym. Very confident in the pool.
SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT AND GENERAL COMMENTS Very interested in Nature.
Well, generally, as intimated, the comments are rather bland, and I'm not going to copy out those for every year. My 'physical ability' deteriorates over the years, however, and other abilities come to the fore, it seems. I couldn't help noticing this comment in the end of year report for class 4, when I was 8 years, 2 months old, in the category for 'ART, CRAFT, NEEDLEWORK':
Very individual style but has some good ideas - well done.
Notice the use of the word "but". This is typical of the Victorian attitudes that lingered even when I was at school. I hated school and even as a child had a notion of a superior natural education that would actually be focused on nurturing children as individuals, encouraging the particular talents and interests of each. The general feeling I am still left with is that school was actually designed to destroy children's curiosity and interest in the world.
At least in those days there wasn't enormous pressure from exams and exam-learning from a young age. My first three years were not even graded. After that I notice that I received exclusively A's and B's. That was while I still had some interest in lessons, before comprehensive school, which was dreary, oppressive and barbaric, and destroyed what joy in life still remained to me at the age of eleven.
In the final year report for the primary school, my age given simply as eleven, I noticed written the following comments under ENGLISH (for which I received a B):
LANGUAGE: Good vocabulary. SPEECH: Sometimes indistinct. WRITTEN ENGLISH: Uses words well. Enjoys story writing. Has many good ideas within a rather narrow 'science fiction' field. Needs to develop an insight into people as characters.
I've also just discovered this, a great piece by the artist Vincent Chong, which, according to his website, is destined for my forthcoming novella, Shrike. The strange thing is, a piece of cover art, from the same artist, already exists. But maybe this is for the back cover, or something. Even then, there is a photograph that I believe is earmarked for the back. I'm rather impatient to see the finished item now to discover how it's all going to work together.
By the way, for those who have pre-ordered copies of the novella, thank you, and my apologies for the fact that its publication appears to have been delayed. I'd like to be able to promise to have something out in the meantime for you to enjoy, but I simply haven't acheived the status yet where I can guarantee that a publisher or editor will even read something new I've written, let alone publish it. I do tend to feel, with each thing written and published, that I'm basically back to square one; I don't yet get the sense of things 'snowballing', I'm afraid.
I've been reflecting on this a lot recently.
I'm glad to have had the supporters I have, in terms of publishers and readers, but have to say that I don't yet really feel understood by more than a handful of people, and this is frustrating. It's also scary in a way to have my marginal status increasingly brought home to me by encounters similar to the age-old pairing of head and brick wall. It would be nice to think I had my finger on 'the pulse', but it seems this sensation comes from me simply having my finger on 'a pulse', and, it turns out, some nameless and morbid pulse wholly different to that which titillates the fingertips of most of those with whom I share this planet. I frequently have experiences which seem somewhat like sitting with someone and holding their hand only to have them say goodbye and rise from the bench, leaving me wondering whose hand it is that I am still holding. Because I am alone again with this five-fingered beast.
Someone recently told me that he wasn't really keen on the kind of thing I write, but that he felt I was probably writing within a very particular field about which he knew little. Well, this is true, and yet it's false. I think if I really were writing in a particular field or genre, life would be much, much easier for me. But genres are tribal, and I think that none of these tribes - the most obvious candidates would be horror, science fiction and fantasy - would look at me and recognise me as one of their own. On the other hand, there's still too much of the ghetto-smell of genre about me for me to belong in the world of Booker Prize winners and other humanistic, literary writers who all produce utterly forgettable prose. I'm too tired to explain why this is at the moment. But...
From childhood's hour I have not been As others were; I have not seen As others saw; I could not bring My passions from a common spring. From the same source I have not taken My sorrow; I could not awaken My heart to joy at the same tone; And all I loved, I loved alone. Then- in my childhood, in the dawn Of a most stormy life- was drawn From every depth of good and ill The mystery which binds me still: From the torrent, or the fountain, From the red cliff of the mountain, From the sun that round me rolled In its autumn tint of gold, From the lightning in the sky As it passed me flying by, From the thunder and the storm, And the cloud that took the form (When the rest of Heaven was blue) Of a demon in my view.
'Alone', by Edgar Allan Poe.
No, I can't explain more right now. I must sleep. By the way, as mentioned, I did see Morrissey live on Friday, and will probably blog the event at some point in the near future.
I've been a bit busy recently, hence the lull in my blog. I was hoping to research and write more on GM foods, amongst other things, but I don't know if I'll get time for that, after all. I also have an urgent mission relating to Burt Reynolds that I still haven't completed, and, well, all sorts of things.
A few bits of news for those who are interested, and then we shall go to the intermission for a while. First of all - the title of the forthcoming Morrissey album has been announced, and it is... Years of Refusal. Hmmm. Not the best title ever, but some of the song titles make up for that, my favourites being, I Was Bully, Do Not Forget Me, and Because of My Poor Education. I don't know what happened to Mozzer's poetic album titles, though. Best album title? Maybe Hatful of Hollow, I think.
I've started writing a couple of new stories, too. I won't give details of those, but will only say that my recent reading of Algernon Blackwood's 'The Wendigo' has revived my interest in stories that make your flesh creep and give you unquiet dreams. I've also completed the first draft of my novel (sequel to the forthcoming Shrike), Susuki, and hope to have certain persons read it and give me feedback so that I can revise it effectively and send it to a publisher soonest.
Other news? I watched Silence in the Library, the latest Doctor Who episode last night, and thought it was okay, but not as good as it was billed to be.
With renewed intimations of my own mortality, I find I am spurred on to read more and more books (violence in the library?), and have started, amongst many, many other volumes, Beroul's The Romance of Tristan.
I am growing accustomed to my life in Wales, and have no plans to leave, though would not be surprised if circumstances force a move at some time.
As usual, apologies to all those waiting to hear from me who have not heard.
Er... Anything else? New stories up on Chomu. I'm planning to conceive a passion for Andean music when I get the time.
You wouldn't believe how many different writing projects I have at the moment.
Any questions?
No? Then let us proceed to the intermission, and you will be hearing from me sometime. There now follows an intermission:
Well, I've just received news that Tartarus Press has shifted the last few copies of Morbid Tales, my second collection of short stories, and will not be reprinting. I note that the book is already listed as out of print. Don't ask me where you can get hold of the few remaining copies that are for sale. Obviously not from Tartarus, and not from me, either. I don't have any spare copies, I'm afraid, as I've already given them all away to people who probably use them to adjust the height of their computer monitors with.
Every now and then, when people learn I write stuff, they will say to me something like, "Oh, I'll check the shops for your book", at which I usually get a sinking feeling and wish to kill myself. I suppose people can't be blamed too much for not buying my books, as they are ridiculously hard to get hold of. I've been told by someone that he always recommends my books to people, but they find the buying process online too Byzantine and eventually give up on the endeavour, along with the wearying business of taking air into their lungs. Well, now they have a very slight inkling of how I feel most of the time about being a writer. It's fucking horrible, thank you very much.
Anyway, I didn't mean to go on another rant. This (rant) has just come out unexpectedly - obviously it's still there lurking beneath the surface.
But no, people are sadly, sadly naive about what a writer's life is like. No, I don't earn a living from my fiction. I know many, many writers, and I'd say fewer than one percent of them earn a living from their writing. What I mostly see in the world of writing is writers getting shat on repeatedly. Another common misconception I'd like to dispell here. When a book is published, right, that doesn't mean that suddenly infinite copies of it exist in a never-to-be-exhausted supply. Print runs are finite, and, when you're not famous, are usually very, very limited. This means that, if you're lucky, the book could disappear from the marketplace, forever, within months. If you're not so lucky, it will theoretically stay in the marketplace forever, just because no one buys it, or it could get remaindered.
So, how do I feel about the first edition of Morbid Tales coming to an end? Hmmm. Well, Morbid Tales was my second collection, but the fact that it was a hardback, nicely produced, did give me a certain sense of actually being a writer. When I got the cardboard box with my copies in, I felt - and this is typical of me - nothing much really. This was what I'd worked for for many years. I had a very faint sense of satisfaction, hardly passing the threshold of thought into feeling. I like the cover. The book got one or two reviews that gave me something of a boost as a writer. I mean, in terms of confidence, not in terms of sales or anything like that. I'm glad, generally, to be associated with Tartarus Press, and if you want to support them and me you could always buy a copy of Strange Tales Volume II in which I have a story, and tell them you particularly want it for the story by Quentin S. Crisp. You could also just buy more books and read more generally.
I don't think I've answered my own question. How do I feel about Morbid Tales coming to an end? Well, copyright reverts to me now, so I can always try and interest some other publisher in the material. I'm a bit too tired for that at the moment. What I really feel is not so different to what I felt when I first held the solid book in my hands. But now I also feel a vague sense of freedom and a vague sense of emptiness. This is what I became a writer for - this freedom, this emptiness.
WIDGETIZE
