Just an update -- nothing to see here

[felis_ultharus]

A few things:

1. Merry Christmas to those who celebrate it ^_^
   
   
2. I've been spending most of my time with Sean and Sam, which has been fun. Spent Yule with Sean, and Sam got me another set of Tarot cards ^_^
   
   
3. My mornings have been devoted to my novel. I'm going to fall short of 50,000 words in 12 days, but I'm now edging towards 11,000 words (since Tuesday) as of this morning. It's much more sophisticated than my previous version. I had to excise one of the supernatural elements, and devote myself to the development of the other. Tone and style have greatly improved, and I'm finding ways to get my point across without sounding preachy. I get my best work done on this coast, and so I want to do as much of it as possible here.
   
   
4. Bad books happen to good authors. I was enjoying Neil Gaiman's Smoke and Mirrors -- a collection of short stories -- but most of the stories in the second part of the book are cheap Lovecraft parodies that aren't even unintentionally funny. I think the retelling of Beowulf on the California coast will one day be remembered as the low point of Gaiman's career.
   
   
5. It's said that our skin cells are all shed and replaced every 27 days. The skin looks the same, but no one cell of it remains the same. I've been thinking of that as I walk Victoria's downtown core. I used to run into people I knew there every few steps. I've spent every afternoon downtown this week, and haven't met a single person I once knew. The city's the same and yet is a city of strangers. I suspect that everyone I knew has fled.
   
   
6. I spoke with a second gay clerk. So Victoria has two gay men. It's crawling to cosmopolitan-hood faster than a man with three broken limbs.

Comments

[maidenofirisa.livejournal.com]

1. Thank you!

3. Good work on the novel. I can't wait to be able to read it. :)

4. I've recently started reading Smoke and Mirrors. I stopped reading it when I got World War Z (an amazing book) but I'll get back to it soon. Now I'm curious to see how bad it is.

5. Is Victoria that bad?

6. I wonder if they know each other? Maybe there is an underground-ish group of gay men in Victoria. Msybe they're planning to take over the city?

[rougemacabre.livejournal.com]

6. I wonder if they know each other? Maybe there is an underground-ish group of gay men in Victoria. Msybe they're planning to take over the city?

Well, taking over the world is what many Southern Christian conservatives would claim. One of my exes had a whacked out father. For Christmas one year, he gave all of his friends and family a copy of "The Lambda Conspiracy" which was some stupid book about how homosexuals were plotting to take over the world for Satan or some such nonsense. It terrifies me that people actually believe that. :-/

[montrealais.livejournal.com]

As I believe I've said before: Take over the world? I can't even deal with my cat.

[felis-ultharus.livejournal.com]

No, it's true! (http://www.somethingpositive.net/sp05162004.shtml)

Seriously, though, books like this are what makes me worry about the spread of fundamentalism. I mean, there really is very little difference between a text like that and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which was already known to be a fake long before the Nazis used that old conspiracy theory.

So far, in Canada, they've been losing the battle. But in the US, with its powerful influence on foreign policy, the situation for gay people actually seems to be deteriorating. Twenty or thirty years separates Protocols and Hitler's chancellorship. What'll the situation look like in 20 to 30 years for American gays...?

[rougemacabre.livejournal.com]

Love the comic!

Fundamentalism is a pretty scary thing. :-/ Having lived in a hotbed of it, it's appalling how much power they have.

[montrealais.livejournal.com]

Msybe they're planning to take over the city?

What for?

[felis-ultharus.livejournal.com]

Nah. They're probably just trying to escape from behind the Tweed Curtain.

[felis-ultharus.livejournal.com]

3) At this rate, I should have another draft of it done rather rapidly.

4)I'm still reading Smoke & Mirrors. I hope it gets better. I've given the gift of Gaiman thrice this Winter because he's usually a marvellous writer.

5) Actually, Victoria's even worse than I've made it out to be. It has changed a bit -- some of the forests have been uprooted for condos, and the downtown area's gotten rougher. I've seen more people drunk in the afternoon, or grey in the way I associate with heroin use, in the week I've been here than in the last five years in Montreal.

6) I'm exagerrating, of course. There were four people in the gay bar when I went in -- though they were older, and all seemed to know each other. And the community is quite literally underground -- the one gay bookstore died, so all that's left are two bars (one of them a mixed crowd) that are both below street level.

[rougemacabre.livejournal.com]

Merry Christmas! Sounds like you're having a good time in B.C. and are getting a good amount of work done. ^_^ Look forward to having you back in Montreal though!

[felis-ultharus.livejournal.com]

You too!

[jenjoou.livejournal.com]

I meant to respond yesterday but I had to run outside to tape up our car. >_<

More tarot cards, cool. ^_^ Any theme to these ones?

Congrats on the novel, I can't wait to see it.

But apparently I can wait for Smoke and Mirrors....

Was the second gay clerk cute too?