8/4/01

The power just went out.* A black cloud of doom has enveloped the sky above my apartment, and I can barely see what I'm doing here. Noah's ARK it's raining hard!

Yet it's humid as hell. Sweaty, shitty, ugly weather that robs your body and soul of ambition and energy. I've been standing in my doorway, with the side of my body facing the two windows above the television. I'm trying to get a perfect stance to capture a soothing crosswind, but the wind only comes every 5 minutes or so. There's no air at all. Just a stifling wall of heat and dread that makes me long for October. Or, better yet, November (that way low humidity and crisp 50-something degree weather is guaranteed). And I can't find my candles.

So that's where I find myself: in the dark, alone, sweating my you know what off.

I think if you search my previous Notebooks (on the handy new indexed Notebook page you'll find an entry where I promise new Notebooks every single Wednesday. Ahem. I had fully intended on doing just that, but other writing has gotten in the way. Really, that's no excuse, but that's the excuse I'm giving.

Current projects: getting the book ready for printing, going weekly with my Ironminds column, uploading 7 or 8 new articles to the archives, and working on two massive additions to the site. The new Fiction section (which is self-explanatory), and the new...well, I can't tell you yet. One, because it's a secret, and two, I don't have a name for the section yet, at least not one that irritates and bores the heck out of me. But both will debut the first week of September. Promise.**

I'm also reading The Shores of Space, a 1950s collection of short fiction by Richard Matheson. I had planned a whole column about Matheson and Ellison and a bunch of other writers I like (and the recent passing of Poul Anderson), but...

...short Notebook this week. Things to do. See ya next Monday (yeah, it's Mondays now).

*I know, you're asking, "then how the hell is he typing this?" I'm not. Right now I'm on the couch using something called "paper." Have you ever tried this stuff? It's amazing! It's ultra-thin, lightweight, and extremely portable! You can even fold it several times so it fits in your pocket or wallet or purse or notebook. And then, you can unfold it, and it retains it's original shape (and what you have written on it remains unscathed)! It never crashes or breaks down, so you never "lose" the stuff you've written, and it's COMPLETELY immune to viruses and hacking and power outages! Someone should patent this stuff. I tell ya, I see a big future in it.

**There I go, promising things again.