to autumn

It's perfect Autumn weather out there. Crisp and cool and sunny and wonderful. Perfect walking in the woods weather. Well, that's what the dog thinks, and who am I to argue?



At night, the tree below catches and strangles any living creatures that get close enough, but even it looks practically normal on a day like today.


The greenery in the background is buckthorn, which we're trying to eliminate as an invasive species. We're right now accumulating an enormous pile of the stuff to burn, which you can see below and in the topmost picture...

The burning won't be on November the 5th this year, because that's the Beowulf premiere...
...


I just read your 30-second scary story and thought it was a lot of fun. You're right: it was scary.
Is there any possibility that you will be publishing the 90-second REALLY scary version anywhere?

So I looked and it's up at

http://weekendamerica.publicradio.org/programs/2007/10/27/_ten_tales_of_terror.html

but do me a favour. Don't read it now. Wait until it's dark, then click on the link and listen to it...

I wish you could read or hear the original, longer version. But I kept cutting it and cutting it to get it down to 30 seconds, and didn't save as I went. I guess I could write a new version, but then I'd be expanding, if you see what I mean. (And there were people who handed in 70 second stories!) (Shakes head ruefully.)

The title is theirs, incidentally. And the editor has trimmed pauses or sped it slightly, to lose four seconds. (I think if I were doing a show like this I'd suggest people write minute-long stories, if only to allow for the pauses. If you're telling a scary story, it's the pauses that make the listeners do all the work, allowing them to build up the picture in the silence, and scare themselves.)

...

A couple of people have written to ask if I have to stop writing completely when the writer's strike starts. Nope. As a WGAe member I have to stop writing any film or TV, and can't discuss future work or option anything new with film or TV companies -- per http://www.wga.org/contract_07/StrikeRules.pdf The basic principle behind these Rules is very simple: you (and your agent or other representative on your behalf) may not pitch to or negotiate with a struck company, and you may not provide writing services, sell or option literary material to a struck company.

But I'll keep writing things that aren't film or TV...

American Gods Blog, Post 38

Went to England for four days. Heard some wonderful music. Came back. Spent a day at home (a whole day!) and then flew to LA where I am to be Master of Ceremonies at the Nebula Award banquet Saturday night.

I’ll be doing a signing Saturday 28th of April (tomorrow, or later today, depending on when you read this) (unless you read this after Saturday, of course), at the LA book fair at UCLA at 1:00pm, at the Dangerous Visions/SFWA area. Come and say hullo if you’re in the area.

Lots of interesting things happening – the permissions were all gathered in in a manic last-minute flurry which owed an awful lot to Kelly Notaras at Harper Collins US; the Canadian signings seem to have edged earlier and the UK signings have continued later and I’m not sure at this point I get a single day off (excluding transatlantic travel days) between June 18th and July 20th; I may be doing a reading in tandem with a Magnetic Fields concert in June in New York; various interesting media things happening – lots of magazines and periodicals doing reviews and features on the book.

And I am not writing about any of these things because, with the writers strike looming, I am madly trying to finish writing some additional material for a very cool Polish/Japanese film called AVALON, so am spending all my time in my hotel room playing and replaying the video of the film and making notes and writing bits.

The best bit about the writer’s strike is a bunch of contracts that have been being negotiated with various studios' business affairs departments for the last 18-months-to-a- year were messengered over to my hotel today, and I sat and signed, and signed, and signed. Obviously a strike, like a hanging, concentrates the mind wonderfully.