Somewhat better. I think Chris Rose and I are devolving in much the same manner, though. I haven't lectured anyone on littering yet, but most of the time I have absolutely no clue whether I'm behaving appropriately. Not that I was ever all that great at it, but I feel as if I've lost all my gauges. I'm not sure if it would be a good idea or a terrible one for us to go out drinking together.

As well, the Times-Picayune ran a nice obituary for Mr. Joe Casamento today. I didn't realize he had been born above Casamento's and lived his entire life in that spot. If ever anyone shouldn't have been displaced by that damnable storm, it was Mr. Joe.

Got a cool e-mail from Angie M, which I hope it's OK to reprint here -- I'm a little gun-shy about quoting people in the wake of accidentally causing someone to change their entire journal name (well, I don't know if I was the only cause, but I know my actions didn't help and it made me feel awful. Still, for the record, if you e-mail me about something regarding the blog and/or my work, I do reserve the right to quote it here unless you specifically ask me not to. And if you're unpleasant -- though hardly anyone ever is -- I might do it anyway). This one's about my newish Subterranean Press chapbook, Crown of Thorns:

Dear Doc,

I care about your NBA talk, too. Keep an eye on the Bucks this year!

Also, I think I'm one of those people who didn't really understand "Crown of Thorns." If you care to give me a hint that'd be neat, because I was intrigued by the story.

I have crushes on Steve Nash and Rasheed Wallace.

Love,
Angie

I replied:

Angie, thanks for caring. Steve Nash is hot, I admit it, except occasionally when he looks like an alien.

I'm afraid I am not much for explaining my work, giving hints, etc. If the story didn't work for you, no worries -- I hope there will be others that do. Alternately, you could join one of my LJ communities and start a discussion about it -- people actually talking about my work on those things would be quite a novelty!

PZB

And then Angie wrote back:

I couldn't find it again, but I think you mentioned in your journal (which I love to read btw) that you hoped people would like "Crown of Thorns" but you didn't think many people would actually 'get' it. I'm paraphrasing there, or maybe I made it all up. But even if I don't know what your intentions were with it, it definitely worked for me in my own way (and most importantly, I guess). I was just curious.

Thanks for the reply - it made my day. No need to reply to this one, I know you're busy!

I bet Steve Nash and Sam Cassell came from the same pod.

Angie

POD!!! I love it! I bet they did. (And by the way, I think Sheed is pretty hot too.)

The reason I worried that many readers wouldn't "get" Crown of Thorns wasn't because I felt I'd been particularly mysterious, deep, or oblique with it, but because only two of my five or six initial readers seemed unmystified by it, and they were both writers who have on occasion been accused of crypticism (crypticness?) in their own work. Perhaps this means I should have shelved the story, but I felt I'd done what I wanted to do with it and I just didn't feel like sticking it in the filing cabinet. (Besides, then I wouldn't be able to truthfully say no when those little horror magazines come sniffing around saying, "We can't pay much, but we thought you might have some old work you'd never placed," as if I'm just going to say, "SURE!!! HERE YOU GO! Take this ancient piece of crap from my files for free!" In truth, I did do that once, with the late, unlamented online zine The Spook, and the editor thanked me by stiffing me for a piece I did not intend to give him for free.)

Anyway, the thing is, I don't mean to sound all divaesque by saying "I'm not much for explaining my work, giving hints, etc" -- I simply don't have any clue how to do it. The only way I have of "explaining" the work is by writing the work. If it's not in there, then I didn't know how to say it. There's no answer key I'm holding back -- "Dr. Brite's stepping on the gourd symbolized X." I will say that Crown of Thorns felt like a very intuitive story for me, one I was very much feeling rather than thinking my way through, and if your intuition doesn't work the same way mine does, then the story might not make sense to you. It's cool. Give it some more thought, and if it still doesn't make sense, blame it on me, not yourself. I don't accept that the writer has many "responsibilities" other than to do the best work he's capable of, but he is undeniably responsible for making himself clear, and I may not have done that in Crown of Thorns.

Or maybe I just don't know how to write horror anymore, and that's OK too. I know I went on and on the other day about how you can call me a horror writer when I'm writing horror, but in truth, I suspect I am pretty much done working in the genre, though I certainly wouldn't resist a horror tale if it grabbed me by the throat and said, "Write me!"