Owl Woman

Long time, no post. Too much has been going on recently, but things are calming down. I’ve been reminded of my mortality over the last month and so got trawling on the ‘net again for potential publishers for the first novel. My genius must be recognised! Or not – Serpent’s Tail rejected my synopsis and two sample chapters very quickly, describing it as ‘not falling within any of their genres’. That almost sounds like a good thing, except that ST publish stuff the mainstream won’t touch. Anyway, they were polite and fast, so I’ve got a further list to try – a synopsis has already gone out to someone else. Two short stories have also gone to a publisher of ‘weird fiction’. I managed to get hold of the address of an American queer SF publisher, despite the library network’s best efforts to block all access to it. Dealing with the US can be difficult, what with some wanting return postage and that appearing to be impossible to buy here. Recycle the synopsis and send me an e-mail! There was a letter in the Guardian recently from a woman who said that it was about time the impossibility of getting a book published unless you were already famous was made clear to writers. Perhaps we shouldn’t even try, just put it all on the ‘net or even just chuck manuscripts under the bed. What does it matter, if you really believe in what you’re doing? Nice ideal, but ego and scraping a living are things that are impossible to avoid.

The last few nights here have been amazing; the moon is huge, low and orangey, hanging over the sea, with a beautiful silver path leading away from it on the water. That and half price veg at the local supermarket makes being poor completely irrelevant. The sea breezes are back with a vengeance, so I can go outside again without cursing the heat. I sat for hours at an old arsenic labyrinth the other day (a lot nicer than it sounds) and read the rest of Armisted Maupin’s ‘The Night Listener’. Never read one of his before, in fact even long after I’d come out I thought ‘Tales of the City’ was a dreary old ‘classic’ set in the 1800s. The Night Listener was very easy to get into, and I finished it in two or three days. It’s a good story, too, except for the ending, or rather, the Afterword, which is a lousy cop-out, the modern equivalent of ‘and I woke up to find it was all a terrible dream’. Shame on him! It made me angry, I always feel cheated when that happens. The novel had a natural ending that should have been there. But read it if you get the chance. Just stop when you get to ‘The End’, and you’ll be a much happier reader.

And still the second book creeps on. Quite a feat bearing in mind the stuff that’s been going on, but quite frustrating nonetheless. I was asked if I would consider doing a book on the Dresden Dolls, but I know nothing about them and don’t want to waste months on research a la Green Day. They look like a decadent goth duo, very good image but I’m too old for this shit…

On Monday T and I went up to Men-an-Tol for the first time in quite a while. It’s a popular site, but seems to lose nothing when people are around. Some North American hippie women were hugging the holed stone but it was good just to sit nearby and contemplate. The landscape is wonderful, a panoramic view across the moors, and the wonderfully named Ding Dong mine on the horizon. Best moment of all was passing a group of witchdykes on the track and having one of them say, “Hello, sisters”.