Inchoate · Incites

As you may all be aware, I haven't been blogging for a while. Well, mindlessly busy among other things. Deeply buried in travel from place to place and spending time in foreign offices, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Paris, Rotterdam to name a few, and Bangalore just coming up. Shanghai, Manila to come. Busy boy.

Anyway, as the inestimable Mr. Klima suggested something, I thought it was a worthy cause.

So, why did I choose my word for LOGGORHEA, that wonderful little anthology edited by said Mr. Klima?

The word itself is EUDAEMONIC. Think about the word. Roll it around on your tongue and feel the shape of it. Something that's the bringing of joy, and yet it contains a demon, or a daemon if you will. You demonic enitity. You demonic thing, you make me happy. You bring me joy. It's all there in the layers of meaning and sound contained within the word. Lovely.

And just as a teaser, here's another take on it by Vandermeer.

EUDAEMONIC

From the Book of Smaragdine, 1st Edition:

People from far off places ask why we worship the Green. They think of us as fools or outcasts. Yet even an ape can understand that human beings are born, live, and die. Even a beggar knows the alchemy in this basic transformation. To achieve true understanding, then, and thus true happiness, it is important to understand that transformation. Otherwise, our stay here is a ceaseless wandering, whether we roam or not.

Would you like to hear a riddle?

What power is strong with all power and will defeat every subtle thing and penetrate every solid thing?

In giving yourself to the Green you will know what it means to search for answers to questions such as these. You will become secure in your happiness.

People say that we do not know what happened to the Tablet, that it has been hidden from us for a reason. But this matters not. If we fail in the finding or the reaching,
should ever our own city fall and be forgotten, then still we shall be eudaemonic in the failure.

There you go.

If you are piqued, then try these as well:

The Podcast:
http://virtualantho.blogspot.com/2007/12/appoggiatura-part-7-eudaemonic.html
Mr Klima's master post:
http://evzine.blogspot.com/2007/12/logorrhea-as-told-through-appogiatura.html
The Logorrhea main site:
http://www.logorrheabook.com

And this has nothing to do with Elvis. But I've been thinking on this, about the strange fierceness that attends identification with and belonging to a genre community. I write skiffy, I write horror, I write (on occasion) fantasy, but I also write stuff that is not necessarily identifiable with those particular classifications. When I'm actually writing, that is. I've been reading quite a lot lately and many of the authors who have become stalwarts are showing a tendency to stray beyond their traditional genre boundaries. I name Baxter, I name Joyce, and there are others. Or those that wander far away on purpose, e.g. Lethem, Mike Marshall Smith.

There also seems to be a growing trend to write what are basically historical novels under the guise of genre. Then, I look at the other way around. Look at those that claim not to be genre, but then wander fairly purposefully into the genre camp but refuse to acknowledge it in public. Look at Atwood.

Those hard within the core of genre bare their teeth and brandish the spears of trueness to the form, to the tradition. Talks and posturings about the lit-rat-char abound. I wonder if it really matters. Personally, I think not. It's all about the fact that we're really fanboys and girls at heart and we need to justify to ourselves and others the place of the heroes of our perception, and thereby justify our own toils and aspirations.

I have started writing my next book. It is, as usual, a story of alienation and apartness. Whether it wall fall into any of our recognised genre categories remains to be seen. It doesn't really matter. That's for the agent to worry about.

It is quite strange discovering all of your novels in BitTorrent download sites worldwide. I know there's very little I can actually do to change or police this. The sites multiply every day. How many people are reading me without buying me?

I suppose I should be flattered that someone has taken the effort to digitise my work and make it publicly available, but, you know, I do wonder in the long run what it means for the struggle and effort I have put in to try to build a career.

I guess, ultimately, I lie back and think of England.

Maybe I can become a household name without doing anything.

I quote from the terms of a site:

"Again we must emphasize that it is impossible for us or any other Usenet service to police hundreds of thousands of articles that pass through our server¹s everyday. Any article that passes through our servers is the SOLE RESPONSIBILITY of the person who posted the article or created the newsgroup.

news2me does not produce any content that passes through our servers."

Through this supposed service, copies of my books are available.

This is the site: http://www.news2me.com/member_area/fileview.html?grp=alt.binaries.e-book&display_count=1

Check, people.

The world is quietly conspiring against me at the moment because of the Workbeast. I am in the process of bringing a number of countries newly live on a large system and it is chewing space time (spacetime?) and bandwidth. Hence, my somewhat below the lines of visibility. Tonight, I will post a range of returns for information. I am working (the true work) with two novels in progress. They are, of course, progressing slowly. I have worked on the dayjob so far every weekend this month, and next weekend will be no exception.

Back into the swing of things after Austin, but this damned cough will not go away. Why is it that conventions invariably lead to a legacy of disease amongst the community. Far too many people seen and spoken to (and far, far too many questionable photographs), yet despite that, it was a very low-key convention.

One has to ask the question whether WFC, primarily geared towards the industry professional, benefits from panels and programming in the same way Worldcon does. It's a completely different audience.

While there, confirmation of another story acceptance, details to follow later. Meanwhile, I must quell the urge to write a big fat fantasy....

Well maybe.

Or maybe not.

On my way to WFC today. I will have no computer with me. I want to take the opportunity to put pen to paper on long plane rides and various downtimes which may or may not occur over the next week. Back online next Wednesday.

Oh, and an updated travel schedule:

1-9 Nov, US
22,23 Nov, Zurich
27 Nov - 1 Dec, Vilnius
4 Dec - 7 Dec, Moscow
11 Dec - 14 Dec, Budapest

And that's all I know for now. First time I will have been to the Baltics though, so that's unusual. Not that I'll get to see much.