I checked the date very carefully this time and am pretty sure I have it right. The Bridge Lounge, 1201 Magazine Street (corner of Erato), 1:00-4:00pm. I'll be reading around 1:50. Entire schedule is behind the cut.

( ACLU Banned Books Reading Lineup 2009 )

As well as the section from the epilogue of It, I'll be reading a short essay King wrote in response to the removal of his books from school libraries. Unfortunately, I won't be able to stay for the whole event, as my stamina has been limited lately and Chris has to be at work at 3:00. I'm particularly bummed that I won't get to hear my pal louismaistros read from Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio. This is a book I've long meant to read, and I'll pick up a copy at the event if it's available (the featured books, along with some of the author/readers' books, are usually sold there).

Hanging in here. Had a nice weekend with Chris: lakefront, beautiful softshell crabs at R&O by the lake, driving along the lakefront, visiting the (somewhat worse for wear) Mardi Gras Fountain, going to the zoo, laughing a lot. Also, for anyone who didn't catch it on Twitter or chefcdb, The Green Goddess made the front page of Gourmet.com! (The story's no longer on the front page, but still on the site.) Pretty amazing for a restaurant that's only been open three months, but I truly thought Chris could do it if he had a chance to buckle down and do it just the way he wanted. I think this same story will be in Gourmet's print magazine next month.

Pain has been bad, though, so I'm creeping around like a little old crippled man trying to clean up the house for my mom's visit next week, and what problems there are in the garden I'm letting the ladybugs and assassin bugs handle. Harvested three lovely eggplants today. When I'm not doing these things, I'm reading the Dark Tower. Again. Do it please ya. Or not.

So I had to stop taking the Vilify Abilify because it was screwing with my ability to read, or, more specifically, with my concentration on and enjoyment of reading. It would take me half an hour to get past the front page of the newspaper. I was skipping around between books, reading three or four at once, which I almost never do and don't like. I've been worried about this apparently atypical side effect since I first noticed it on June 25, but it came to a head on Sunday when I tested myself by thinking about the new Stephen King book and felt about as much excitement as if I were thinking about a block of wood. Clearly this was not acceptable. I quit taking it the next day. According to my doctor, the drug's half-life means it should clear my system in about a month. I can't wait, because I hate this.

Other than that, I'd say it only worked OK. I think it made me a little speedy. It improved my mood, but conversely, it also gave me a craving for -pams. I don't know how that worked. I don't mean to sound like a Special Flower, but my reactions to medication are not always typical; I was apparently one of three people in the world who didn't experience those very unpleasant-sounding "brain zaps" when I went off Cymbalta for five weeks. Perhaps it confirms the prevailing theory that your correspondent does not, in fact, have a brain.

Looking back at yesterday's entry, my review of Haunted Heart seems a little out of proportion, like using an ICBM on a mosquito (does that date me terribly? Do you young people even know what ICBMs are these days? I hope for your sake that you don't). It's true I did not like the book (and it turns out that I may have been right about the author's remembering a more "upbeat" movie ending to Thinner; again, this is unconscionable given that she was explicitly referring to the texts of the Bachman books), but I should note that I have also felt lightly slimy after reading biographies I did enjoy, such as Elvis: The Last 24 Hours or the Michael Jackson one that told about how he shaved his chimpanzee's ass cheeks. I even felt lightly slimy after writing a certain biography, though I don't think I would go back and do things differently. We live how we have to live, and we don't always get to stay in our ivory towers devoting ourselves to Art.

But I find that I cannot compare writers' biographies to junk about Elvis* or Michael Jackson. My standard is The Lonely Hunter, Virginia Spencer Carr's life of Carson McCullers, which seems to me the finest literary biography I have ever read. While Stephen King has led a more interesting life than he seems to believe (and I don't blame him for wanting to think it uninteresting; after a certain point, writers must start cultivating and craving boredom if they are to get anything done), he has not had the travels, tragic loves, or fascinating neuroses of a McCullers (and a good thing for him, too, sez I). While I can't imagine that The Lonely Hunter was easy to write by any standards, biographies do write themselves so much more readily if the subject has managed to get him- or herself into a lifelong series of big, splashy messes and dramas. I dearly hope that nobody is ever able to make anything of mine. You, there in the back, stop snickering.

*I should admit that anything about the end of Elvis makes me a little sad, as I like his music and a part of me will alway understand how a person could get to that point. However, Albert Goldman's amazing lack of perspective, over-the-top sense of outrage, and willingness to present speculation as dead-to-rights fact all make it impossible for me to take seriously anything he writes.

Friends and neighbors, I was down for the count. Wheezing, lips turning blue, the works. I mean to tell you, I was so sick I took to rereading Stephen King again, because I thought I might not get another chance. As best I can recall, I read The Shining, Pet Sematary, Christine, The Dark Half, The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, Night Shift, and maybe one or two others last week. In the midst of that, I took time out to read the new biography Haunted Heart: The Life and Times of Stephen King by Lisa Rogak. I wanted to like it, but I fear it is a lazy, shoddy thing, written by someone who seems more familiar with the movies made of King's books than with the books themselves, of which there is virtually no substantial discussion or placing in the context of his life. What little discussion exists only reveals Rogak's unfamiliarity with the work, as when she states, "[Unlike the other Bachman books,] Thinner more closely resembles a King novel with its upbeat ending ... " ( Possible spoilers for Thinner )

But I speculate. What I needn't speculate on is the lightly slimy tone of Haunted Heart. It reads as if written by a biographer who did her best to dig up dirt on the guy, but just couldn't find much. I admit I gulped it down, and even learned one or two interesting facts from it (I call them "facts" because they are direct King quotes), but there's little new material here for those who have read On Writing and the standard King reference works by Doug Winter, Stanley Wiater, et al. Stephen King deserves a far better and more complete biography than this. I expect it will happen someday, but maybe not within his lifetime. Maybe writers are best written about after their lifetimes, at that; the complete shape of their lives may allow a clearer perspective on their work. And no, I'm not studying on doing the job myself; for one, anything I wrote would be a hagiography, and thus dull as dirt; for two, although he has twenty years on me, I wouldn't be at all surprised if Stephen King outlived me. After all, his habits are better.

Re: my post yesterday "If You Get a Call From A Crazy Man," yes, as a couple of readers have suggested, I do think there is a certain type of guy who gets off on trying to make women feel weak and incapable of protecting themselves. (Seldom, though, do they come bearing delicious pastries.) When it happens to me, I'm always surprised anew into trying to reconcile their physical view of me with my own, so I'm usually too knocked off balance by that to get mad at the "You're just a little girl!" shit. But for women who ID as women and are capable of protecting themselves, I can imagine this would get old real fast.

Of course, there's a tiny 89-year-old lady who has attended OLGC her entire life and is helping with the vigils now, and even though she's very sharp, I don't feel entirely comfortable leaving her in the church by herself. I don't harangue her about it, though. Hell, she's 89; she's had time to develop better judgment than mine.

Reminded by a spam e-mail from Barnes & Noble, I just had to dash out today and buy Stephen King's new short story collection, Just After Sunset. I will be simultaneously relieved from the desolation of Chris' absence and even more scared to sleep alone.

We just drove up to Riverbend to fill our fancy new cooler with ice at a friend's restaurant. Uptown streets are almost deserted, businesses closed, windows everywhere blinded with plywood. The "mayor" is, I believe, issuing a mandatory evacuation order even as I type. Contraflow on the highways begins at 6:00 AM tomorrow. Chris and I are nestled in cozily, like bugs in a knothole, on edge but prepared (and slightly, inappropriately euphoric). The cats are calm. The weather is gorgeous, though very hot.

Dammit, I meant to pick up the new Paul Theroux book before all this shit went down. I got nice bright camping lanterns so I wouldn't be caught without a reading light this time. Of all the creature comforts we lacked in early September of 2005 -- air conditioning, hot showers, hot food (except those scary MREs), clean clothes, flushing toilets -- I think that bothered me most of all, because, as Stephen King reminds us, "book-Valium" is one of the best drugs in existence.

Fighting yet another flu bug, or something. Me and Frankie -- I get the stomach stuff and he has the upper respiratory beat covered. I have tried to eat more, eat more widely, and generally improve my health over the past few months, but I'm still underweight and generally in crappy enough shape that every kind of pestilence floating around seems inexorably drawn to my weakened guts. (I had to type "inexorably" three times to get it right.) Had a funny drawing to post, but that will have to wait until I find the energy to screw around with the scanner. For now, I'll just sip ginger ale and continue memorizing the complete works of Stephen King. Oh, Annie Wilkes, Paul Sheldon, Jack Torrance, Dick Hallorann, Gordie LaChance, Richie Tozier, Mother Abagail, Larry Underwood, Jim Gardner, Edgar Freemantle, Edouard Delacroix, John Coffey, and the rest, thank God and Big Steve for you all, without whom I might have dissolved into a quivering puddle of jelly thousands of times over by now.

This post on therealpzb made me happy, not just for the kind words about D*U*C*K but for the props the poster gives to novellas in general. They're a form I like very much, both to work in and to read. The poster mentions Different Seasons, which may well contain Stephen King's single finest piece of writing ever ("The Body"). I believe Peter Straub does some of his absolute best work in novella form ("Pork Pie Hat," "Mr. Aickman's Air Rifle," more). The post was particularly welcome just now because the latest, otherwise mostly favorable Amazon customer review of Antediluvian Tales complains that "Even D*U*C*K, her latest, has been downgraded to a $35 'novella.'" I suppose it's bad form to bitch about four-star reviews -- and I do appreciate the fact that the reviewer seems to read everything I publish -- but this annoyed me a little. First of all, D*U*C*K wasn't "downgraded" to anything. I contracted with Subterranean Press to write a novella and I wrote one; neither SubPress nor I ever claimed it was going to be anything else. Second, I don't know what those snarky quotation marks are for; novella is a perfectly valid literary term and D*U*C*K is a perfectly valid novella. Third, if you know you don't like novellas and find $35 (a price over which I have no control) too expensive for such a book, don't buy the fucking thing. No one is holding a gun to your head.

Novellas have a bad name even among writers, because they're hard to publish: magazines and anthologies don't want a piece that will take up that amount of space unless you're a big name. And no major publisher is likely to publish a Different Seasons-like collection of novellas unless you're a really big name. One of the things I value deeply about Subterranean Press is that this kind of corporate BS isn't an issue; as long as it's good work, they will publish story collections, novellas, short novels, chapbooks, and other interesting forms for which the larger publishing world has little time.

By the way, I linked to Subterranean's D*U*C*K page because I noticed that Amazon is temporarily out of stock, but in general, it's better to buy my Subterranean books directly from Subterranean; they'll get there so much faster that it's well worth giving up the slight Amazon discount.

My Personality

Neuroticism	99
Extraversion	1
Openness to Experience	83
Agreeableness	75
Conscientiousness	19

You are sensitive about what others think of you. Your concern about rejection and ridicule cause you to feel shy and uncomfortable around others. You are easily embarrassed and often feel ashamed. Your fears that others will criticize or make fun of you are exaggerated and unrealistic, but your awkwardness and discomfort may make these fears a self-fulfilling prophecy, however you feel enraged when things do not go your way. You are sensitive about being treated fairly and feel resentful and bitter if you think you are being cheated. You tend not to talk much and prefer to let others control the activities of groups. Familiar routines are good, but sometimes you like to spice up your life with a bit of adventure or activity. You are tenderhearted and compassionate, feeling the pain of others vicariously and are easily moved to pity, however you are not adverse to confrontation and will sometimes even intimidate others to get your own way. You are not an overly cautious person. You will think about alternatives and consequences but make up your mind fairly quickly.

Take a Personality Test now or view the full Personality Report. The best Buying Pet Gifts.

99% neurotic. Very nice. I suppose this is borne out by the dream I had last night. It was an active night all around -- Chris reported that when he got home, I woke up enough to accuse him of sitting next to a pregnant woman who'd started to go into labor. I don't remember this; as best I can recall, I spent most of the night in my father's hometown of Whitesville, Kentucky. My father didn't want to do anything but lie around and watch the football game at my deceased grandparents' house, and for once in my life I wasn't in the mood for football, so I decided to go out and walk around. Unlike the real Whitesville, there was a small downtown area with shops, restaurants, and even boutiques. No one was shopping in any of them and I wanted to buy something to help them out, but I'd left my money elsewhere. Then I found myself standing at a bus stop across the street from an abandoned pink house, holding a novel manuscript I'd written. The pages were in reverse order and I was trying to collate them. A well-dressed young European guy (yeah, you see LOTS of those in Whitesville) came up and started asking me about the manuscript, then about the house.

Suddenly (in the way of dreams) I had knowledge of the house. It was a Bad Place. A couple who'd leased it before it turned really bad -- I think they might have been my friends R.J. and Julia Sevin -- told me they'd let Stephen King tour it, but the landlord found out and punished them by increasing their lease to 11 years. "I can get us in," I told the European guy, and led him across the street and up the porch steps. The house was an Acadian cottage with broken windows, loose porch boards, tilting roof supports, and a hideous, soul-sucking dirty, almost fleshy pink color, like the pink plastic used for some appliances back in the '50s. We walked through the living room, which wasn't too bad, though there was a sad, dirty feeling. I went into the kitchen and immediately knew that's where the badness was. The pantry had a curtain hanging over it, and I saw a tiny, deformed paw come out from behind the curtain. Then, abruptly, I found myself hanging in midair, about halfway between the floor and the ceiling. I could feel a huge but invisible mass of squishy stuff between my legs and didn't know if I had been yanked into the air or if stuff (invisible guts? ectoplasm?) had come out of me and was holding me up. The European guy was staring at me in horror. "You better not run off and leave me, you fucker," I yelled, even though I knew he was going to. I realized my manuscript was gone; I'd left it somewhere. And then I woke up.

All morning and afternoon, whenever I've thought of the pink house, I have had that "1408" feeling: "Even if you leave this room, you can never leave this room." Chris urged me to stop thinking about it, but I said no, Chris, that filthy pink house came out of my mind and I have to own it. If I refuse to own things like that, I'm never going to be creative again. He nodded, seeing my point but (I think) glad his own creativity centers mostly around food and he doesn't have to own things like pregnant women and bad pink houses that make you squish out invisible guts.

I was invited to a crawfish boil today and really wanted to go, but woke up with a bum right leg that wouldn't stop raving and whinging even after five Ultrams and the heating pad. Fucking thing. Later on it eased off a bit, but by then Chris had already taken the car to work, so I messed around in the backyard, chopping weeds with my brand-new hedge shears and thinking of the most horrifying scene in King & Straub's Black House; hanging a couple of new bird feeders; planting some kind of shrub called Esperanza Gold Star, which is supposed to have "clusters of showy, fragrant yellow flowers summer to frost." (I'm hoping we won't have any freezes next winter; my gingers did OK in the last few, possibly because I covered them, but my habaneros are only just now showing the feeblest signs of coming back.) And then just sitting on the back steps, watching the perfectly ordinary yard birds -- sparrows, house finches, cardinals, mourning doves, the occasional trouble-making blue jay. And of course the "street eagles" (pigeons), who amuse me by crowding in and covering the biggest feeder so thoroughly that you can't even see it.

Milton brought me the Esperanza Gold Star plant about three weeks ago, as well as a baby fig tree and a baby orange tree with delicious-smelling blossoms, heaving them into my yard in a grocery cart before I knew what was going on. I don't even want to know what nefariousness resulted in Milton gifting me with trees. Normally I turn people away if I suspect the stuff they want to give or sell me is stolen, but in this case there seemed little chance of returning the trees to their rightful owner(s), and I didn't want to just let them die. Ah, well. There is an abandoned nursery in the neighborhood where plants still grow. Maybe they came from there.

If you can stand a couple more Our Lady of Good Counsel videos, I think these two are very good.

Another one from nola.com

By reader Sarah Elise Lewis

For interested parties, my current round of eBay auctions ends tomorrow afternoon. That first-edition hardcover of Swamp Foetus -- a real rarity -- is currently priced at $76, and from what I've seen online and in convention dealers' rooms, it would be a bargain at twice that price. So go getcherself a bargain, and help this precious boy. Shameless, I know, but the situation is what it is, and right now it's pretty damn sucky.

OK, I saw myself on the 5:00 news, and I hereby award myself the Whoopie Shit Medal. I shall now take some relaxation pills, ignore the Internet and anything church-related for the rest of the evening, and read Joe Hill's Heart-Shaped Box. (He hath given us a SON!!!) It's very good so far, though the veteran nitpicker in me was annoyed by a reference on page 1 to John Wayne Gacy "molesting little kids" (Gacy's victims were older teenagers and young men -- not that this excuses his crimes, but 15-to-25-year-olds are hardly what I think of as "little kids"). I guess he takes after Dad, whose otherwise perfect short story "1408" was slightly marred for picky, picky me by a reference to the ghost-hunting protagonist spending a night at Jeffrey Dahmer's grave. (Dahmer was cremated; to create a gravesite, his parents would have had to be even crazier than they were.) I'd be more than happy to have the Kings over for a serial-killer-trivia refresher course, should they happen to find themselves in town. We could do it Jeopardy-style:

"I'll take Gay Gore for $400, Doc."

"Solicited his victims in London's Soho, enjoyed powdering and cuddling with their corpses, eventually boiling their heads in a large pot."

***BZZZZZZ***

"Steve?"

"Who is Dennis Nilsen?"

Seriously, I'm going to bed now.

I promise I'll move on to another subject soon, but you have to realize that this religious thing is a huge deal for me right now. Anyway, a reader asked how my "journey to Catholicism" began. As best I can recall, it started with trying to write accurately about characters (the Stubbs family) who had varying degrees of Catholic faith. It soon became obvious to me that there was more going on in these characters' minds and hearts than I understood. I didn't agree with everything their faith made them do -- e.g. Mary Rose and Elmer Stubbs conspiring to split up the boys in The Value of X -- but I could see that it was valuable to them, valuable enough so that G-man could never quite turn loose of it even though he felt that the Church had rejected him and his life partner hated it. Things really began to crystallize when I started writing the short story "Bayou de la Mère," which was originally inspired by a late-night walk through St. Martinville, Louisiana during which Chris and I observed two different statues: a perfectly normal Virgin Mother near St. Martin de Tours Cathedral, and the seated, blank-eyed, (to me) extremely creepy Cajun heroine Evangeline in the old cemetery behind the cathedral. These statues merged in my mind and a tale began to ferment. I wrote to Doug Winter, who is something of an expert on such matters, asking him to recommend movies that contained creepy Catholic imagery. One of the movies he mentioned was Stigmata, which he said was a terrible movie but contained some good imagery. I thought it was an OK movie myself, but I wasn't as struck by the imagery as I was by the piece of Gnostic text that comes up again and again, purporting to be the words of Christ: "Lift a piece of wood and you will find me; split open a stone and I am there," or something very close to that.

This really resonated with me for some reason (and still does). Previously, I had only been to Mass twice in my life: once by accident, when I stumbled into the middle of one at Our Lady of Guadelupe on Rampart Street while attempting to deliver a petition to St. Expedite, and once for a friend's funeral. Now I began to wonder if there was something there for me besides research, and I started intermittently attending Masses at different Catholic churches all over the city. I didn't explore any religion other than Catholicism, because it is such a vital part of the founding and fabric of New Orleans that I knew it would be the one for me if any was. Eventually I got to Our Lady of Good Counsel -- mostly because they had (and have) late-afternoon Masses on weekends, which fit well with my schedule -- and immediately felt more comfortable and welcome there than I had anywhere else. I attended services there off and on for about five years. I also became much more serious about the St. Joseph altar tradition, which I had previously viewed as a kind of trick-or-treat for foodies and New Orleans culture vultures (both of which I am, of course).

So that's how it began. Although I've been preparing to be received into the Church since before Christmas, I think my decision was really only finalized a couple of weeks ago, when I was working on the St. Joseph altar. I realized I was proud of what I was doing there and ashamed of what I would do when I got home. Basically, I decided the way I was living was not good enough for me. Some core of will I didn't know I still had rose up within me, and I promised myself and the Powers That Be that after St. Joseph's Day I would stop abusing painkillers. The decision came in a form I can only call a thought-bolt: "Look, you can either keep fucking up and probably get a heroin habit and spiral into ghetto life and maybe destroy your family -- and if you're going to do that, there is really no reason to go ahead with your plans to join the Church -- or you can get your shit together RIGHT -- FUCKING -- NOW."

And I've pretty much had it together since then. Since that actual moment, it feels like, though I did write petitions at all the St. Joseph altars we visited asking him to help me find a way to live with pain without abusing drugs and hurting my family. And I don't know what the ultimate effects will be, but people who have no idea what I did over the weekend keep telling me that I look radiant, that the stress is gone from my face, and so forth. Part of this could be due to the drugs leaving my system. Yes, I am still in a lot of physical pain, and that's where Stephen King comes in, as he usually does if you look deeply enough into anything I do. I decided to reread Needful Things -- a novel that I admit gets somewhat goofy at points, but there was a moment in this particular reading of it valuable enough to compensate for any flaws, when the arthritis-crippled heroine throws away the supernatural cure and rejects its source:

Pain instantly clawed its way into her hands like some small and hungry animal ... but she knew even then that the pain was not as great as she had feared; nowhere near as great as she had feared.

I had no supernatural cure, just many bottles of various pills, but I knew it was true that when you are in chronic physical and/or emotional pain -- and especially when you get used to having at least some relief from it -- you become very frightened of its return, and the fear itself makes the pain worse. I suspect that Stephen King, also an addict, knows this too. I decided that, while I might still live in great pain, I would no longer live in terror of it or allow it to run my life. I knew from my own experiences and my conversations with Father Pat that faith would help me with this. My friend flemco wrote recently, "That's part of the fun of Atheism: I don't belong to a group. There is no throng of people backing up my lack of belief. We do not all meet once a week and trade stories. I am strong enough, by myself, without others or a deity, to remain resolute in my lack of belief." And I believe this to be true for him -- I've always been a little bit in awe of the guy -- but I have had to acknowledge that I am not strong enough by myself, or even with a happy marriage and good family relationships (which flemco also has).

That's all for now, and it looks like enough.

[Addendum: For any Catholics (or anyone else) who cares, my baptismal name is (of course) Joseph, and my confirmation name is Elizabeth, after a devoutly Catholic great-aunt of mine and also because it is my mother's middle name.]

We're just two lost souls swimming in a fishbowl
Year after year
Running over the same old ground
But have we found
The same old fears?
Wish you were here.

Every morning I wake up and wonder
What's gonna happen today
You see it your way
I see it mine
But we both see it slippin' away.

When all you can do is quote old-ass, cheesy song lyrics, you may as well just go hang yourself in the closet. Good thing shotgun houses don't have closets. And that I have kittens. And that I successfully resisted the Duma Key e-files, and now have the book in hand.

I hate it when my LJ friends hint at great drama in their lives and then say "But I don't want to talk about it." But I don't want to talk about it. Being screamed at for roughly a third of the day and ignored for the rest of it by your life's partner who seems to have (probably justifiably) lost all respect for you does tend to put a damper on that excess chattiness.

My God, have I really not posted since Friday? Well, hell, I have new kittens -- who needs the Internet?

In truth, I've been hard at work catching up on my book doctoring. I currently have two manuscripts on my plate, and then I'm free -- so if anyone has been waiting for a spot, this would be a good time to contact me. (And it's been ages since I checked friend requests or messages on the Myspace page, so if you've sent one or the other, please don't be offended that I haven't responded -- I'll get to all of them eventually.)

I've been doing a lot of rereading of fiction. I've often mentioned that George R.R. Martin's Fevre Dream was the vampire novel that most influenced Lost Souls, but his sixties rock novel Armageddon Rag is also a damn fine book that doesn't seem to be nearly as well known. I finished it last night and am now rereading Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions, possibly my favorite of his novels. Tomorrow, of course, is the in-store date of Stephen King's new novel Duma Key, and I'm falling on my knee praying that it will actually be in local stores. A reviewer friend kindly (if, I suspect, quite illegally) sent me an e-file of the novel months ago, but I manfully resisted printing it out and reading it. I want a book, not a bunch of words on a screen, not a pile of manuscript pages, but a gorgeous hardbound new-smelling book I can crack open and smooth back the pages and know that, no matter how many times I come back to it in the future, this will be the only chance I get to read it for the first time ... though I sometimes think I actually prefer rereads to first reads; on the first read, I tend to rush, to get grabbed and dragged along by "the gotta." Rereading frees one from the tyranny of plot and allows for a more luxurious pace, closer attention to the details and the language and the sheer pleasure of the author's voice.

Ever since I first read Misery, cold chicken gravy has really creeped me out. This seems particularly unfair right after Thanksgiving each year. (Not that I eat it cold, but I don't even like to look at it until it's heated up.)

I am in so much trouble, all my own fault and all for senseless reasons. I'm too ashamed to go into it, but I have done a lot of stupid shit since William died, and I have brought trouble upon our home. Trouble with bad elements in the neighborhood. Trouble with Chris, who now thinks (rightly) that I'm an idiot. I can't ever catch my breath; it's like having a 24/7 panic attack. I haven't been this scared since the failure of the federal levees. I don't want to kill myself, as it would hurt too many people who care about me, but if I could push a button that would make me never have existed, I'd do it in a second.

I give my book-doctoring clients my word that this will not affect the speed or quality with which I work on their books. I seldom treat myself well, but when I have responsibility to other people -- especially people who have paid me money for something that's important to them -- I do not shirk it for any reason.

Where are you, William? All I have is a box of ashes and a little bag of white fur clippings. That isn't you. I love all my cats, but you were my only feline soulmate. Chris loves me, I guess he still does, but -- superficial tastes aside -- he isn't anything like me. I wouldn't want a husband who was anything like me. William and I were just alike. I now feel that there's nobody in the world who is like me. Sure, there are friends I have a lot in common with, but William was a carbon copy of me, only tougher and more beautiful. We understood each other completely.

Thank God The Stand is such a long book. I don't care that I know portions of it by heart. I'm not so Annie Wilkes as to believe Stephen King is my soulmate, but he (through his books) can take me away from myself when no one else can.

Yesterday was completely lazy in a nice way. We woke up late, hung around the house, ordered pizza, watched basketball; I worked on one of my manuscripts. I won't say book-doctoring isn't hard work, because it is, but I love the fact that I can do it almost entirely in bed.

Today I am unwell. I could feel a bad bout of sciatica beginning to creep in yesterday, and today it's here full-force. I wish I could just yank the damn nerves out. I'm nauseated from taking too much Ultram. Have done nothing useful. Am rereading The Stand, my ultimate comfort book, always a sign of bad times in my life. For the first several days after William died, I handled it much better than I'd expected to; there was even a sense of relief, because he was in such bad shape those last couple of days that I knew beyond the shadow of a doubt it was time. Now it's beginning to hit me in a different way. Tonight I got out my heated throw, sort of a mini-electric blanket I wrap around my legs when the pain is bad. I hadn't used it since I had it out last week for William -- like all Siamese-type cats, he was a heat junkie -- and there were still white hairs on it. Those hairs undid me a little. I've always thought the saddest word in the English language was didn't, but never is a close second, if not actually a rival.

I don't think we have much longer. A week, maybe two. William is eating and still has great life force, but if we'd gone by life force alone, Colm would still be alive and shitting happily all over our new house. He (William, that is) is too weak to jump now, even just onto the bed. [Edit: I was wrong about that, at least -- I wrote this, then went back and found him on the bed. He's always a little stronger than I think he is.] I appreciate the donations people have sent, as we have to take him in for subcutaneous fluids every other day now and it's $20 per time. I'm not asking for more, just sending thanks publicly as I may not get to my e-mails for a few days. I may learn to administer the fluids at home, but the vet says he'd be a difficult cat to learn on because he's so thin, he has very little loose skin, and the needle tends to slip out even for the experienced vet techs. Also, he has never liked being picked up or held -- it makes him do what we call the Funky Chicken. He loves lap time and coziness, but only when he wants it.

I'm grateful for the manuscript I am currently editing. It gives me something to do besides read. Wait, that probably doesn't make any sense. Of course I am reading it, but it's a totally different kind of reading than the usual. I'm quite sure I use a different part of my brain to do it. Besides -- as ever when I need comfort -- all I want to read for pleasure is Stephen King, and I'm running out of books of his that I don't know by heart.

I realized while rereading Misery for the nth time that the last time I read it, right after the storm, I didn't have sciatica yet. I imagined Paul Sheldon's leg pain as my back pain, but now I can get right down to those rotting pilings with him.

Oh, and I thought of the best name ever for a New Orleans funk band: Green Cap Mother. Two bottles of Dr. Nut for the reference. I'm going to start a virtual version of it with Benny Grunch, Johnny Vidacovich, and the ghost of James Booker. I will play the triangle.