It’s a dark morning. Lots of late-night rain with promise of more. I don’t mind—I like rain, and so long as it stays within the confines of our ditches and levees and I don’t have to stand out in it, I’m good.
My essay 3000 words about the Peloponnesian War is now up at Storytellers Unplugged. For reasons that might become clear after you read it, the essay is neither 3000 words long, nor about the Peloponnesian War.
I procrastinated and frittered a lot this weekend. A friend sent me a tape with the final episodes of season five of The Dead Zone, which I watched intermittently, and also tacked on a few episodes of a Sci-Fi series called Eureka!. It’s about the chief of police in a small town where nearly everyone is a genius of one type or another, high-tech gadgetry abounds, and the main industry is a super-secret scientific development corporation. Matt Frewer (Trashcan Man/Max Headroom) has a recurring role as a gadget-happy doctor with an Australian accent, and Deborah Farentino (Storm of the Century) is the town shrink and operator of the local Bed and Breakfast. The main conflicts are between the sheriff and his rebellious 14-year-old daughter, and between the sheriff and Global Dynamics, whose experiments sometimes leak beyond the boundaries of their headquarters. It’s a fun program, but since I don’t take cable, I’ll probably never see it again, though I hear some of the episodes are available on SciFi.com.
I revised Missing Persons once more, adjusting primarily some chapter order and information release chronology. About 1500 words were lopped off in the process, too. Off it went to my agent again this morning.
I have two short stories ricocheting around inside my head. One is more fully developed than the other; both are for potential anthologies to which I’ve been invited to contribute. After I handle one more essay and a proposal, I’m going to start working on one of them. I haven’t written any new fiction in several weeks, so I’m looking forward to getting back in the saddle again.
I’ll add my condolences to those expressing regret at the death of Charles L. Grant last weekend. I met him at the World Horror Convention in 2002, where he was named Grand Master, but I’ve been reading his anthologies and novels since the 1980s. Somewhere I have a set of Donald M. Grant editions of a trilogy of Oxrun Station books. His last few years were difficult ones. Until reading the testimonials at Shocklines, I hadn’t realized how intricately involved in the early years of NECON he was.