2 July 2002

We have no newspaper. Yesterday, after the "press buttons/outside the delivery area" issue, we got a phone call from a real live human being around lunchtime saying that we had a new delivery person, and the morning paper was indeed still on its way. Well, it wasn't. Or if it was, it still is. We have no paper for today or yesterday. Not acceptable. We are morning paper people. The comics page is good with cereal. The editorials go well with juice. It is the way of the world.

I'm almost done with my juice. Something Must Be Done.

My dad and I were talking about my work, and I said, "I can be Up And Coming now," and he said, "I've been that! Money is better, from what I remember." Well, yes.

I got a rejection letter on one of my queries to a Very Big Agency yesterday, but the agent said that the book set in Finland sounded intriguing, and I should keep that agent in mind if I'm still looking for representation when I finish it. Which is better than a kick in the teeth, y'know.

I'm hoping this doesn't become the Week Of Almost, though.

Sometimes it spooks me when I think that there are people out there, some of them people I haven't even met, who are interested in this book I haven't finished writing. I hope it's a feeling I'll have to get used to -- I hope that it'll get to the point where lots of people are hanging around eagerly awaiting word on my next book. But for the moment, it's just a bit eerie.

It's entirely possible that I'll finish the Not The Moose before I get an agent. This business moves like molasses in January. And I don't, really. But that's all right, I suppose. I do the best I can, and I try to have faith that the people on the other end are doing the best they can, and that's about all I can do.

Sometimes I hear from my college friends and they ask me questions like, "Have you read Ender's Game?" I think this is good for me. I think it reminds me of what it's like not to be surrounded by aspiring SF writers. And it reminds me that books in a given genre aren't at all like physics. You don't have to learn Joanna Russ before you can progress to Pat Murphy. Nobody requires Delany of people before they allow them to read C.J. Cherryh. You don't even have to read Tolkien before you read all of his crappy imitators. Nobody requires it. You can just wander around the bookstore and pick up what you like or what that guy at work told you was good. I'm glad it works that way. It would be a lot less fun if it didn't. But -- sometimes I lose sight of speculative fiction as a hobby. It's good to be reminded of that.

Last night I read The Ghost Road as a break from The Symbolic Species. I thought it was the right end to that trilogy (with Regeneration and The Eye in the Door), and I highly recommend all three of them. Pat Barker. Go. Read. The Symbolic Species continues to get on my nerves in various and sundry ways -- pointless anecdotes linked to free speculation was one good way. Oh, and my favorite: if you have two examples of something, one of them (the one that isn't human, obviously) is the exception that proves the rule! Nonononono. Sometimes I just hate the exception that proves the rule. It never proves the rule. Sometimes it demonstrates the limitations of the rule. But proof is not involved here.

My back is much better, thanks to Dr. Bill, and I'm trying to keep it that way. Our neighbors were chanting loudly and doing shots until quite late last night. (That is, I assume they were doing shots. It was the kind of chanting people do when they're doing shots, and they sounded really drunk.) I really don't know what to do about this. It was not a problem last year. I don't know if it's just one family that's making all the noise or if it's a more widespread problem. If we'd known it was going to be an ongoing problem, it might have been worth looking for a new place, even though I hate moving. The last thing any of us needs is more reasons to feel worn out.

Well. So. I think I'm going to read the last book in the Kara Dalkey trilogy, and work on the Not The Moose, and just...you know, work. Do stuff.