First, the cool news. I just found out from Zoran Zivkovic that he'll be reprinting my story "Ghost Dancing" in issue #5 of his spec fic mag Polaris in late December. I'm going to be translated into Serbian! How cool is that?

(By the way, if you haven't read Zivkovic (pronounced Zheev-ko-veetch) yet, you'll get the chance soon. Prime Books will publish The Book/The Writer in November of 2003, and it should be available at WFC. Ministry of Whimsy will publish The Fourth Circle in April of 2004 and Impossible Stories (which collects all his story-suites into one volume) in November of 2004. This guy is a phenomenal writer; his novella "The Library" is up for a World Fantasy Award this year.)

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This was a pretty fun weekend. Friday night, I finished reading Tim's Little Gods and started my review of it. I also wrote my check for the signed hardcover, and can't wait to see it all bound with the cool cover art. This is a phenomenal collection, folks (as if you didn't know already). It makes me fuscia with envy that this guy, who's a year younger than me, is writing such good fiction. I'll try to get the review written tonight; it should be up within the next couple of weeks.

Saturday afternoon was spent down at the Lazy Lion bookstore for the first annual Fuquay Fright Fest. Ol' Mike Jasper, Drew Williams, and Scott Nicholson were the presiding authors, and they did some readings and some signings and judged the short story contest (congrats to Luna for winning third place). There were trivia questions (I answered two correctly and my prizes were One on One by Tabitha King and a poster to a horror movie I've never heard of) and giveaways. It was pretty fun. I got to hang out with Mike and his lovely wife Elizabeth, and Andreas and Luna, and Scott for a bit as well. Mike brought some copies of Intracities to sell, and after a woman bought one, she asked me to sign my story, which was very cool. Though it was hard trying to come with something pithy to say on the spur of the moment, so I just wrote something lame like, "All the best!" I'll have to do better than that for WFC; I'll have five hours on the train to think of stuff, and should be well full of pith by the time I get there.

I left the bookstore around 5:00 and since I was driving right past my parents' house on the way home, I stopped by and hung out with my dad for a bit. (My mom was up in NYC this weekend visiting my sister.) We talked for a bit, then, since he hadn't seen The Two Towers yet, drove over to Cary. We had dinner at this cool salad bar place called Sweet Tomatoes, then went to Lowe's to pick up some wall anchors, then went to my apt. He helped me put up some wall-mounted shelves to display my Greek vases and gargoyles and other knicknacks, then we watched the movie. He left around midnight. It was a fun male-bonding time, and was nice to hang out with him.

Yesterday I slept in, then read all of Don DeLillo's The Body Artist, which I'd read before, but needed to refresh my memory for my pomo class. DeLillo is the man when it comes to minimalist writing. He is one of Chuck Palahniuk's heroes. I called my lady around 1:00 and talked and jabbered and got caught up. She has a sniffly nose at the moment, so everyone send good vibes her way. The chapbook should be finished in the next day or so, then she'll sign the copies, send them to me, I'll sign them, then take a pantload to WFC. Hopefully I'll get them early enough that I'll be able to send out the preorders before the con, which is only fair since y'all ordered them early. Then the big November 1 Saturday evening launch partay at the con, as well as a corner of the Prime Books table. Woo!

Around 4:00 yesterday afternoon, I met up with Jamie to see Kill Bill Volume One and Oh. My. God. It was such a cool movie, and Richard Corliss agrees with me. I was a little worried at the beginning that the cheesy 70s OUR FEATURE PRESENTATION sign and the Klingon proverb contrasted so incredibly with the extremely intense and disturbing opening thirty seconds of the film, that Tarantino was making a mess of the tone, but he didn't. The goofy and the serious run alongside in this film, occasionally one more than the other, but it's all fun.

I had some logistical questions however; Tarantino makes you suspend your disbelief quite a bit here, but I had problems beyond people getting limbs hacked off but not bleeding to death. Uma Thurman's character, "The Bride", whose name is bleeped out whenever it is mentioned, escapes the hospital after waking up from a four-year coma, and somehow has the money to buy new clothes and a ticket to Okinawa (which ain't cheap). My other beef is when she's flying from Okinawa to Tokyo, with her brand new katana as carry-on luggage. I had to fly into Tokyo airport when visiting Janet in Singapore, and they're just as strict there, if not more, about taking even a pair of scissors in your luggage, not to mention a four-foot long sword. Maybe it was in there for comic relief, but it bugged me.

I also had a structural problem. Tarantino has set the film up into chapters, which works really well, but the order in which things happen could have been done better. The whole premise of the movie is that "The Bride" is a former assassain for the Deadly Viper Gang who wants to leave the life and get married. Her former associates don't take kindly to this, and they murder her entire wedding party. Her former boss, Bill, personally puts a bullet in her head. Somehow, miraculously, she survives, and the rest of the movie is her getting revenge on those who screwed her over. She has a death list, and at the beginning we see that she has already killed O-Ren Ishii (played by the stunning Lucy Liu). Chapter Two goes back four years and gradually takes us back up to the present, climaxing with the battle between The Bride and O-Ren, who we already know dies. It's still interesting and the fight scenes leading up to that final battle are fun and engaging, but as Jamie brought up, your suspense is gone. We know from the beginning that The Bride will win, and that she hasn't sustained any mortal injuries. What I think saves this is the performances of the two women and the well-choreographed swordplay.

Otherwise, I thought it was a great film. Jamie didn't quite share my enthusiasm as much, though he did like it. Tarantino did his job; I'll definitely be in line for Volume Two in February.

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Now Reading:
Benito Cereno by Herman Melville

Stories Out to Publishers:
5

Books Read This Year:
42

Zines/Fiction Mags Read This Year:
35