One thing I forgot to mention about this new round of eBay auctions: I've dispensed with the third-person item descriptions, which are fine for selling collectors' editions of books but felt increasingly weird and artificial on one-of-a-kind artwork. Instead, each auction will now include a paragraph (or at least a couple of sentences) where I talk about what inspired me to make the journal or other piece, what materials I used, and so forth. I hope people find this interesting.

I finally got some new eBay auctions up. I usually like to do it earlier in the day, but this was when I had time, so I apologize if this is bad timing (I know it's not too great for my British and European customers unless they are serious night owls). These are all blank books I've made recently: a "Carnival mask" one, a wetlands-themed one made with nifty, realistic alligator-look paper, and one about New Orleans/home that I especially like, a hardcover journal that comes with a 925 (jewelry-quality) sterling silver NOLA FOREVER charm. Please have a look if you can.

Oh, and I did finish the book-shaped treasure box I mentioned, but I think it needs to be photographed on black velvet rather than the plain brown paper I usually use as a backdrop. If I can find a piece, I hope to get it up soon; if not, I may hang onto it until I can photograph it to its best advantage.

After teasing us a little, the archdiocese decided that Our Lady of Good Counsel could not be opened on Good Friday despite its being one of the traditional churches on the Nine Churches walk. We are going to be out there anyway, talking to people and giving out water to walkers who do include us on their route. If you're Uptown between 12:30 and 1:30 PM, stop by and see me.

Meant to fit this into my long post below, but didn't manage it and don't feel like editing, so: Chris and I are both sick with some kind of respiratory crud that we seem to keep passing back and forth. (It seems to have gone through most of the remaining OLGC congregation, too.) Until today he has been the sicker one, but today I have lost my voice and, it seems, at least half of my ability to breathe. Antihistamines are helping with the breathing part, but the funny part is that my laryngitis has been causing Chris to whisper all day too, even though he can talk just fine.

Anyway, between Boo, this, and St. Joseph's Day, I doubt I will be able to finish those blank books I mentioned and get them on eBay before the weekend. Apologies to anyone who was looking forward to them (I hope some of you are).

Talk about clicking on the wrong link ... somehow, some way, I just ended up on a N.C. State basketball fan forum, and observed that their derogatory nickname for UNC is "Carowhina." Jeez, that's the best you could do ... Cowfuckers? A better nickname might be "Caro-why-do-they-always-beat-our-shitkicker-asses-na," but I thought that might be a little long for State fans to remember, so I refrained from suggesting it. (See title, and give yourself 500 Whoopie Shit points if you get the Carolina reference.)

(This is all in fun. I do not like State's or Duke's basketball teams, yea, verily much do I not like them, but I had good friends who went to both schools, and of course Duke is an excellent university. So is State, I suppose, as long as you want to study agriculture, agriculture, or agriculture.)

We just brought our 15-year-old cat Boris (a.k.a. Boo) home from the vet, where he'd been getting IV fluids and tests since Friday. He had done that thing elderly cats sometimes do where they go from seeming fairly old to seeming absolutely ancient almost overnight, so we took him in and they had to keep him for a few days. Unfortunately, in this case, sending him home just means that they didn't feel they could do anything else for him and wanted him to spend his remaining time with us. It's likely that he has some kind of cancer, but mainly he's just old. Boo's life had a difficult beginning -- ( possible TMI for cat lovers ) -- but, despite not particularly liking other cats, he has had a good run with us. Now he seems comfortable and sleeps most of the time. I'll be keeping a careful eye on his condition, and have vowed not to wait too long just because we don't want to let him go.

So, the week after paying off Shaq's dental bill, we are back in hock to the vet. I've got some blank books that just need the finishing touches, and will try to put them on eBay tomorrow (today will probably be too overcast to get good pictures of them).

I just realized that lately I spend most of my days playing with dirt and plants, and most of my nights playing with paper, scissors, glue, glitter, jewels, and such. Obviously, I have achieved my near-lifelong ambition of regressing to age 5.

In other news, Peter Straub has selected my story "Pansu" for Fantastic Tales: American Stories of Terror and the Uncanny, which he's editing for the Library of America. The volume is due out in October 2009. (Because I am lazy, I just stole those two sentences from greygirlbeast, who also has a story in the book, and substituted my title.) I'm pleased by Peter's choice of "Pansu," as I'm pretty sure this is the first love the story has received since Camelot Books first released it as a chapbook -- no reviews that I can recall, no reprints except in my own collection -- and I do have a certain affection for it. As I wrote in my foreword to The Devil You Know, after a lot of difficult nonfiction pieces and fiction that was grim in every sense of the word, "Pansu" showed me that I could still thoroughly enjoy writing. Between this anthology and Small Beer's release of Second Line (the Value of X/D*U*C*K omnibus), this October is shaping up to be a big month for me.

That's me today. Post-Mardi Gras letdown. Missing my godfather. I wonder if it's ever possible to feel you did enough for a person you loved, spent enough time with him, appreciated him as much as you could have. I doubt it.

My current eBay auctions -- Guilty But Insane, a U.K. ARC of Swamp Foetus, and two badass Carnival-themed blank books -- end today. I know things are tough all over, but we are simultaneously trying to pay off a $600+ vet bill and start a restaurant, so please have a look if you can.

[ETA the day's bright spots so far:

1. Thanks to Times-Picayune gardening columnist Dan Gill, I learned the name of a little plant I have loved all my life even though it is a weed.

HENBIT


When I was very young (4 or 5), I remember that henbit had a subtle, delicious fragrance, but now that I am old, I cannot smell it at all.

Dan Gill also helped me ID three of the major weeds that plague my garden -- chickweed, wild geranium, and the hideous burweed, which not only chokes out other vegetation but also makes me itch if I pull it without gloves -- but that wasn't as enjoyable, though I suppose now I can curse them by name as I yank away at their roots.

2. Plantation Cheese Log: The deep South's equivalent to paté. Thanks for this gem go to marquisdd and the "Cajun-Creole" restaurant he located in Dublin.]

At least once during the final week of madness leading to every Mardi Gras, I need a day where I ignore it and catch up on relaxing/solitary activities. Today was my "ignore day." I hated to miss Tucks (even though Chris went as my envoy), but I worked in the garden, read, and managed to finish and photograph a couple of blank books I'd been procrastinating on.

Hence, new eBay auctions. I'm returning to signed books as promised, this time with an out-of-print copy of Guilty But Insane and a very rare Swamp Foetus ARC (aside from this copy, even I don't have one) from Penguin UK. Both of the blank books on offer are significant to my Carnival this year. One has a sort of "Nixon Gras" theme, featuring two of my past costumes amidst various Carnival gaiety. The other's theme is "Skull & Bones," which will be my costume this year. Early on Mardi Gras morning, Skull & Bones gangs from the poor black neighborhoods of New Orleans take to the streets with a mixture of menace, fun, and warning (their slogan "You Next" refers to mortality in general and to the effects of drugs and violent crime on their community in particular). I've gone as a Nixon Skull & Bones guy before, but it was years ago, before we had a digital camera, and I didn't get any good pictures, and anyway it just feels right this year somehow, what with the "You Next" business and all.

A cool thing happened when I was Googling images for the Skull & Bones journal: I found some wonderful photos of the North Side Skull & Bones Gang on Flickr, taken by one Charles Silver. I began composing an e-mail explaining my blank book project and asking if I might use a couple of his images in a book, but before I could send the e-mail, he sent me a Facebook friend request. Synchronicity! Anyway, I used the images with Charles' kind permission, and Charles takes all sorts of great photos of New Orleans and other subjects, and you should check him out.

eBay auctions of the Lost Souls?/Sacred Yew journal and the Royal & Divine Birds journal end later this afternoon. We'll call these the Shaq's Last Tooth auctions in honor of the $515 dental bill he rang up this week (our cat, not the basketball player).

[ETA: Because I am going to the parades, I probably won't be able to send out invoices until late tonight or tomorrow. If you win one of the auctions, you are welcome to proceed to checkout, but please consider purchasing insurance on domestic shipments (the overseas service I use includes up to $100 insurance). These journals are unique, I cannot replace them or refund your money if they go astray in the mail, and I die inside a little every time I have to ship one without insurance.]

Cymbalta works by restoring the balance of certain natural substances in the brain (serotonin and norepinephrine), which helps to improve certain mood problems. -- drugs.com

I've been taking Cymbalta for maybe eighteen months. It definitely helped, but I feel I'm at a point where my brain should be able to handle a little more of its own balance. I'm not on sick-making painkilling drugs; I'm not in crippling pain (most of the time)*; I'm doing creative work; I'm active in the world. While I am still subject to anxiety attacks on occasion, I am no longer a whipped and whimpering ball of PTSD. There is no generic Cymbalta yet, and the drug is ridiculously expensive. More important, I don't like taking antidepressants, I only agreed to try this one during a period of crisis, and I don't want to be dependent on it anymore. So I'm tapering off, slowly and (at least according to medical advice) safely.

Now I just need my brain to back me up on this.

Assuming that my brain-chemical imbalance was caused by extreme stress and depression (and I think that's a fairly safe assumption, given that I was not a particularly broken person before the levees failed), it should be able to rebalance itself now that I am no longer living in those conditions. What I am worried about is the period -- if there is one -- between when the Extra Bonus Serotonin fades out and the Natural PZB Serotonin kicks back in. I'm sure that is a gross oversimplification of how the process actually works, but I do know from past experience that there will probably be a period of danger during which I am likely to become bad-tempered, cry for no reason, make dire predictions, and eventually convince myself that I really am just crazy and will have to be on this drug forever. There is something very negative in me, something that wants me to hate everything and myself most of all. I've gotten pretty good at shoving this thing back down into the depths where it belongs, but as the Cymbalta wears off, it will doubtlessly show its ugly head more often.

One thing that helps me is the St. Francis prayer. I often say it in its entirety, but I don't have it memorized, so when I realize I'm acting like an asshole to someone else or myself, I just repeat in my head like a mantra: Make me an instrument of your peace. Make me an instrument of your peace. Make me an instrument of your peace. It does help. Sometimes. Even when it doesn't, it serves to remind me that I don't want my life to suck. You wouldn't think a person would need reminding of that, but over the past three years, there have been times when I genuinely believed that having a non-sucky life would be some kind of betrayal of all we have lost. Teh mental illness, it is fun.

Anyway. Not asking for advice (though I wouldn't mind hearing from others who've stopped taking Cymbalta how it affected them), donations, or affirmations of any kind. Just wish me luck, if you don't mind.

Two new blank books are up on eBay. One has a Royal & Divine Birds theme; the other has to do with Lost Souls? at the Sacred Yew. (Oddly, I feel perfectly comfortable revisiting characters and settings in this medium that I'd never consider writing about again.) If you bid on them, I promise to spend the money on something more fun than Cymbalta ... like maybe Shaq's teeth-cleaning and dental work next week.



See that fang poking out so cutely? That means his body is rejecting it, so the fang and probably a few other teeth will need to be extracted.

*OK, so a more accurate choice of phrasing might be, "There are frequent times when I'm not in crippling pain." I was trying to look on the bright side, but if I paint too rosy a picture, people will start wanting me to do signings and conventions and stuff again, and I just don't feel my health is predictable enough for that.

I don't know if it works this way for other people, but I find there is a lot of music I loved in my younger days that I can no longer listen to -- not because I stopped liking it, but because it resurrects the time when I was listening to it with a clarity I don't care to experience.

Today in the shower, apropos of absolutely nothing, I realized that R.E.M. has lost that weight for me. I am totally digging out Fables of the Reconstruction later.

I wish this would happen with The Cure, but I doubt it ever will.

Forensics Noir journal auction ends later today. The other items have a few more days yet.

I like to ease into these eBay entries, give readers a little content besides GO BID ON MY ITEMS OH GOD PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE, but it's supposed to freeze south of the lake tonight and I need to cut to the chase so I can go bring in/cover my plants before it gets dark. I've just listed three new eBay auctions. Two are blank books: a gothy cat/punctuation theme (I have a feeling this will make sense to a certain sort of person) and a very goofy Obama theme, which marked the first and very likely the last time I will ever use rainbow unicorns in a journal design. The third item is something different, and for that I owe a debt of inspiration to one of my new Facebook friends, Ilea Jones. Commenting on one of my status updates, she mentioned making pocket shrines. Of course I'd heard of pocket shrines before, but somehow this mention plus seeing some little tins at the craft store equalled Pocket Haunted House! I had great fun making this and plan to do more -- perhaps a Pocket Cemetery?

The Forensics Noir journal is still up for another couple of days too, so please check out the auctions if you can. Now I gotta go tuck in the greenery.

My newest bastard, the Forensics Noir journal, is now on eBay.

( Blank book photos )

As usual, I'm only putting up images of the covers here, but I have some of my best fun doing the endpapers (one of them features faustfatale!), so please check out the auction if you are so inclined.

So after making this borderline-blasphemous journal, I thought I had better return to St. Francis' guiding principle -- Make me an instrument of Thy peace -- with the next one.

Re: "borderline-blasphemous," I was referring purely to the technicalities of the Roman Catholic Church. Alfred Hughes is a bad leader who has hurt many people -- he's done a lot worse than close churches, believe me -- and I see no shame for even good Catholics (i.e. better ones than I) in disliking him, parodying him, or asking that he be replaced. Still, the St. Francis II journal definitely grew out of anger, so I thought St. Francis III should better reflect the saint's message of (vegetable rights and) peace.

... are now up on eBay. As I wrote in the auction description for SFII, this journal turned into a very personal project. My starting point -- St. Francis of Assisi's affinity with worms and other humble creatures -- became a meditation on the closing of Our Lady of Good Counsel and the fact that the archdiocese elected to have me and other parishioners removed from the church by police as we conducted a prayer vigil. The covers are relatively innocuous, but the endpapers depict an earthworm with the head of Archbishop Alfred Hughes together with the quote He treated bishops and earthworms with equal courtesy. -- St Francis of Assisi: Devotions, Prayers, & Living Wisdom, as well as a torn-paper collage from an OLGC bulletin partially obliterated by a post-Katrina-style X denoting the date of the police raid, its perpetrators, and the number of families (450) displaced.

So after making this borderline-blasphemous journal, I thought I had better return to St. Francis' guiding principle -- Make me an instrument of Thy peace -- with the next one. Something about elephants seems inherently peaceful to me, so I incorporated them into the design. Go figure.

I'm almost finished with another journal, but probably won't be able to put it up today, as the light is unlikely to hold long enough for me to photograph it.

ETA: It occurred to me that people who aren't interested in/can't afford the journals for purchase, or are simply linkaphobes, might still like to see them. I'll just be posting the front and back covers of each journal, all behind LJ-cuts for people with slow connections. To see endpapers and other details, please check out the auctions themselves.

( St. Francis Journal II: Church Closings )

( St. Francis Journal III: Instrument of Thy Peace )

Here's one for the annals of the U.S. Postal Service. We get almost all our mail at a post office box, but yesterday a letter arrived in our home mailbox. The street number on the envelope matched ours, and that's about all they got right. Not only was the street wrong, but the letter had been addressed by a person in Davis, CA to Student Nutrition Services in Davis, CA. Somehow, in the course of what Mapquest tells me is a 2.2-mile journey, it was diverted to New Orleans. Rather than just dropping this one back in the mail marked "Return to Sender," I think I'm actually going to have to return it to the sender myself and enclose a note letting her know what an adventure her little letter had.

eBay auctions of the first St. Francis journal and the Goth Deluxe journal end this evening. People seem to especially like the gothy journal and I will try to make more in this vein (har!), but I need to get some more black paper first. I've not yet put up the second and third St. Francis journals because I don't like the way they photograph in artificial light and it has been too overcast to get good pictures of them in natural light. Hoping to have them up soon.

The first of the blank books goes out tomorrow -- to Spain, where my books have been before, but I have not. I've finished the second and third books in the three-book St. Francis of Assisi series and will probably put them up tomorrow. The first one is already up, along with the lovely black and red Goth Deluxe journal. (That translucent, veined red paper slays me. I must return to the store, a craft zombie, for more of it.)

I have had, and continue to have, tremendous fun making these books. Yesterday I was talking with a painter friend who has also written a book. Writing is easy and fun, she says, but it's hard for her not to look at painting as work. Funny how that happens. I started off writing Liquor totally for my own enjoyment, because writing had become largely joyless. I told myself it was fun, disposable crap and I didn't care if I ever finished or published it. Somewhere along the line, though, it started to matter, and then I was told I couldn't possibly do it and it started to matter in a different way, and by 2006 it mattered so much that I had written four novels, a novella, and a bunch of short stories about the characters. And it had hardly ever stopped being fun; the things that derailed me from writing had little to do with my characters or subject matter.

Anyway, so far, making these books is play for me. I'm trying to improve my technical skills and make them look as good as possible. A couple of them, I think, even express something beyond aesthetics. But if it stops being fun, I'm going to stop doing it. Until then, I hope people will continue to look, bid, and enjoy.

Oh, and I made the tag "blank books" because I feel like an asshole every time I use the "art" and "books" tags on these entries. In fact, I think the "art" tag can go away altogether.

I just put up two more blank books for eBay auction. I hope dark souls who found the previous ones too colorful will like the Goth Deluxe journal, which was a lot of fun to make. The other one is the first in a series (probably three) I intend to do on the theme of St. Francis of Assisi and/or gardening.

I stopped listening to music while writing 15 years ago, but I find that I like to play it while working on the blank books. So far, Johnny Cash suits me best, with various '70s cheese (Al Stewart, Gordon Lightfoot, Billy Joel, Jimmy Buffett) coming in a close second.

If I did those Livejournal mood things, my current mood would be "nervous as hell."

I've just put up my first three new creations on eBay. A couple of weeks ago, as Chris and I were having our morning coffee-and-paper routine, it came to me in a flash of illumination: "I don't feel like writing anything right now, but I do feel like making stuff. Why not make stuff for other people to write in?"

So I made a trip to Michael's, which we refer to as "the crap store" because I cannot bear to think of myself as someone who does "cr*fts," and I messed around with glue and fake jewels and pretty paper and all sorts of other fun stuff, and voila, the result: blank books. They're not actually handmade books, since they start life as spiral-bound notebooks with regular covers; however, I spend several hours on each one, adding covers, endpapers, ribbon markers, etc., and each one is unique. If these first ones do well, I plan to keep making and selling them. As for the description "author/artist Poppy Z. Brite," I don't really consider myself an artist, but since I'm currently concentrating on making stuff, it seemed silly to keep referring to myself solely as an author. Besides, strange things happen when you get used to writing about yourself in the third person.

Please have a look, and bid if you can. If you can't, please at least wish me luck. I've kept up my eBay sales off and on, but this is the first work-related thing I have really set my mind to and enjoyed for the past couple of years.

[ETA: I'll still be selling signed/limited editions of my own books on eBay too, of course. I concentrated on blank books for this set of auctions because they are new and I want to see how people like them.]