I do want to communicate to friends, family, and the occasional digital passer-by who may visit this blog.  But I don’t want to make it easy for data-miners to use my information.  So this is my compromise: editing out old posts. After all, is anyone really going to go back to read my “Happy New Year” post from January 1, 2007? I don’t think so. Off it goes, along with well over 200 other trivial updates and comments I’ve posted over the last four years. My goal will be to preserve posts that offer information or thoughts that may, possibly, have enduring interest to readers and to get rid of the rest … just as I edit my writing, my possessions, my activities, and my social network accounts.

Cheers!

The Harrow Press is also moving along on Mortis Operandi, with several stories accepted and a handful more about to be decided upon. We’re also closing a deal on some fabulous cover art, so with any luck we’ll be able to unveil that soon, too!

Mortis Operandi submissions are still open, of course — if you have a story about a criminal investigation that involves the supernatural in some way, please send it along — the submission guidelines can be found on The Harrow Press website.

And then I ended up 4,000+ words over the top limit. Almost all of that lovely history and description was left on the cutting-room floor. Oh, the agony! But thank heavens for my two fantastic beta readers, who helped me make the cuts and strengthen the story — I couldn’t have done it by myself.

So now I’m tackling the edits on The Harrow Press‘s Day Terrors, which was in abeyance while I finished the C&C story — sorry! But I’m back on it now.

And I’m also contemplating participation in National Novel Writing Month. I missed it the last two years because I was working on other projects (a novel, Boys’ Love Manga), but other than DT, I have no pressing projects at the moment. So … maybe Clockwork Heart 3? I kick-started CH and its sequel during NaNoWriMo, and An Agreement with Hell. I find it a great way to get started on a novel. But it’s more stress and deadline pressure again. Hmmm…..

This is the Clockwork Heart sequel in the paper edit; chapter one. It’s going to take me the rest of the week to finish the editing process, I suspect, unless I can really power through on one of the days I don’t have to teach.

My newswriting students get their articles back looking like this and freak out. They don’t realize I’m just as strict with myself!

(1) I got rid of a bunch of old furniture, tableware, and artwork that no longer felt like a good fit. Some of it has been replaced with new stuff; some, not.

(2) I’m doing more art. For the last few weeks I’ve gone to the open art studio on Friday afternoons at the university where I work; the professor in charge has allowed me to play around with her supplies, challenging me to loosen up and go with the creative flow.  I feel like I’d like to draw more often, but I haven’t yet incorporated it as a regular habit, so for the most part my pencils and new sketchbooks sit patiently in the living room, waiting for me.

(3) I began kempo classes. I took judo, aikido, and a little jujitsu from childhood through about my second year of college and then let it lapse. Now, a couple of decades later, I’ve signed up again for something new. I’m not sure if I’ll stick with it — depends on how much it costs, how much I decide I like this more aggressive martial art, etc. — but I’ve enjoyed the lessons so far.

(4) I went out with the university’s geology field trip for three days, camping out in Death Valley, exploring abandoned mines, and pounding on rocks at various (non-National Park) sites. I’ve camped before, but not for a few years, and this was my first visit to Death Valley.

(5) I’m starting up a new website, TheHarrowPress.Com, and kicking off a new POD book project with The Harrow’s anthology editor Kfir Luzzatto — look for the new site and our call for stories on Halloween.

This Friday I’ll be off to Yaoi-Con, which isn’t a new experience, but I haven’t been there for two years, and this will be the first time that I’ll go and know a handful of people. We’ll be presenting a panel on Saturday, 2-3 p.m., in Room C: “BL Research: Beyond the Ivory Tower.” The topic will be the academic book on boys’ love that I’m co-editing and yaoi research in general. I hope I may see some of you there!

(Photo by S. Bilodeau. I’m the one on the far right, contemplating the likelihood that a brine dragon lives in one of the underground pools beneath the jagged salt formations of Death Valley’s “Devil’s Golf Course,” waiting to attack unwary mine workers.)

In case you were wondering, the Harrow we’re named after is the calligraphic execution device in Franz Kafka’s 1919 story “In the Penal Colony.”

We received the certificate of US trademark registration number 3,311,359 for THE HARROW PRESS used in association with “on-line publication of electronic books and journals; publication of texts, books, magazines and other printed matter; publishing of electronic publications.”

We recommend THE HARROW PRESS mark be identified with the circle R symbol, ®, to obtain the maximum legal protection.

The Harrow Press’ first book, Midnight Lullabies, will be out this month.

Greeeaaaat. Because, you know, some of the scariest movies I’ve watched have had so many boobs flashing on screen — Barker’s Hellraiser and Verbinski’s The Ring (which, I admit, I did think was scarier than Ringu, probably for cultural-context reasons). For that matter, Scott’s Alien haunted my nightmares for years, too. True, Hellraiser and Alien had gore, and that was part of the horror. But what was scary about The Ring and Alien was the suspense. And what I liked most about Hellraiser and The Ring was the sense of creepiness, of worlds right next to ours that might break through at any moment — through a puzzle box or the idiot box.

Blood and boobs. That must explain literary horror, too. All those boobs … on paper. In classics like Dracula or Frankenstein. Poe’s stories. Lovecraft’s. King’s. Koontz’s. Barker’s.

The answer’s so simple. Let’s just forget the role of liminality, abjection, Othering, regression, taboos, the Shadow-Self, and so forth, in horror. No doubt that’s all a bunch of academic psychobabble. It’s all about blood and boobs.

Which doesn’t explain why women, who deal with spilled blood on a monthly basis for a significant amount of their life, and boobs for most of it (barring mastectomies, a little horror story of its own) might be horror fans.

Yeesh. I can’t believe the reporter quoted the owner of Brain Damage films instead of any one of a number of other producers, directors, writers, or even stars who have taken the time to study and understand the genre. No wonder horror continues to be a denigrated genre.

On the other hand, I may now have an editorial topic for June’s Harrow.

Dru–

[...] We rely mainly on reader donations, although two-thirds of our budget is still coming from a very small number of private donors. [...]

Verily, in Anno Domini 2/19/07 12:53 PM, the most estimable MRC, fiction editor of The Harrow, quoth:

Wow, that sounds totally sinister.

How does one acquire shadowy millionaire patrons, anyways? (Without, you know, opening Gates of Evil or becoming a satanic sacrifice or whatever?)

Regards,
Mike.

Verily, in Anno Domini 2/19/07 1:25 PM, the most estimable Dru Pagliassotti, editor of The Harrow, quoth:

Well, satanic sacrifices for the purpose of obtaining development funds aren’t entirely out of the question. We could add an extra line in our contracts, under Terms of Agreement, that gives The Harrow first world-wide rights to barter the Author’s soul. Would that still be binding if an author “e-signs,” Kfir, or is blood absolutely necessary?

– Dru

Verily, in Anno Domini 2/19/07 2:36 PM, the most estimable Kfir Luzzatto, anthology editor & legal adviser for The Harrow, quoth:

I’m afraid that blood must be involved.

Kfir