Happy Samhain to all and sundry - a cold and blustery sort of day around these parts. Autumn, it seems, put in its two weeks and got the hell out of town. At least it stopped raining, and we're getting good leaves.

Midnight kicks off my work on A THOUSAND THRONES for NaNoWriMo (well, the work proper, as opposed to the fussing and outlining and note-taking and assorted stuff I've been doing for the last three weeks) and I think I got the fear. Gaaaah! No to mention that I just learned yesterday about the phenomenon (most common to fanfic, but not unknown in your regular sort of original fic too) of Mary Sue-ism, and shuddered as I found that Jenny Haniver is probably herself some variety of Mary Sue. Gaaah, again - suddenly I feel all lame. It's like I never knew what a hack I really was until now.

Too late now, though. Motherfucker.

(I console myself with the knowledge I must be doing something right, as I got a whole bunch of really kickass Jenny drawings from Maija yesterday. Her vision is eerily similar enough to Spyder's that I'm wondering now if they secretly have design meetings at some undisclosed rendezvous point. Greenland, perhaps.)

Got some really good recording done in PA over the weekend, including an new-and-improved version of "Master van Rijn" that we more or less kept laying tracks on until we ran out of instruments. Very cool. Fear the whistle.

And Tony got a new bass, and now I have to have one too. Bastard. Thanks a lot, big brother.

Heading up to Allentown tomorrow night - back into the studio to record "Athena, Send Owls" and, um, the other one. It'll be a long drive after an exhausting week, but nothing a fat cigar and a Current 93 compilation tape can't fix.

Stacy still recovering from a fight with the washing machine on Sunday, which had us in the emergency room for several hours while she got shot up with painkillers and they stitched her toenail back on. It was even funny after a while. As of today she's not limping quite as bad, and I've stopped waiting for her to say "Yeth, marthter" all the time. And the wound doesn't look quite so much like Pinhead's been at it as it did two days ago. So that's one crisis down.

And yesterday, part two of The Last Dark Art went online.

Did some vague outlining for the NaNovel last night. A week from midnight tonight, I'll be there, all ready to stare at the blank screen and curse at myself. Wooch. The lengths I go to.

Tired. Deep down tired, weary-tired. I don't know what's up with that.

Not much writing getting done this week - Stacy's got the computer till she finishes her class project. Which is just as well, since I'm feeling especially dry of words this week, though I have two columns yet to write for RPG.net (be the last thing I have time for in November, so better get next month's done now) and some assorted bits to polish before tackling the NaNovel. I was hoping to get THE RESIDENTS #1 done this month, but I dunno. We'll see.

Otherwise, just tired. Don't much feel like being at work. Feh.

Perhaps more coffee's the answer.

Some nutjob shot up my town this morning. Maybe you heard.

Five seemingly random deaths. The first guy was killed right outside the grocery store where we shop, not a quarter of a mile away from where we sleep. Another person was killed in Aspen Hill, only a couple of miles up the road. As I write this, no word has come that they're any closer to catching this joyriding psychopath than at ten this morning.

I don't like the way this makes me afraid to go home. I don't like the way it makes me afraid to go anywhere. I don't like the feeling of running a catalogue of the contents of my refrigerator in my head, just making sure I don't have to stop anywhere for food on the way home.

I don't like being worried about picking my wife up at the Metro after her class tonight, or asking her to wait in front of the station instead of the parking lot.

I don't like the way this makes me think about my own mortality, or what would happen if this were the last day of my life, about how much I've left unfinished. I don't like facing how terribly fragile life is, and how random and unpoetic death can be.

I'm so damn fucking tired of bad news. I feel like my heart is breaking from it.

Anyway, I hope all are safe out there in the big, awful world. If I could get a wish today, it would be that everyone love each other just a little bit extra tonight. We could all use it.

Hugs.

Last Saturday was spent at the Maryland Renaissance Festival, where I did not, sadly, go in costume, as all my pseudo-period clothing is either in need of cleaning or not finished. Just as well, since on two different occasions young women came up to me and started conversations about Neil Gaiman based on my Sandman t-shirt - appropriately enough, since every time I'm at a Ren faire all I can think of all day is Hob Gadling saying "You should spray 'em all with shit as they come through the gates." Tee hee.

High point of the day, and worth at least the price of admission, was seeing the Mediaeval Baebes. They'd done a couple of weekends at the MD faire, and this was their last show of the season; they played to a packed house. (We had to sit all the way up front on the ground. Heartbreaking.) The Baebes are at least as awesome in person as on their CD, and they did "Gaudete" (the first song of theirs I'd ever heard), so I really felt at that moment like a fulfilled person. And I sat there with the sun glaring in my eyes, both feet taking turns falling asleep, a crick in my neck from looking up and my arse covered with wet mulch, and so did not care.

THE VASTY DEEP hit just over 9000 words last night. It's a start. If I can do five times that in half the time, I'll be ready for NaNoWriMo.