Poppy Z. Brite's Blog, page 102

Flotsam & Jetsam

If I didn't know faustfatale and I were destined to be BFF before, I realized it when I found out we had both enthusiastically bought and read the wonderful book Washed Up: The Curious History of Flotsam and Jetsam by Skye Moody, though others scoffed at our "goofy" reading. But right now I use the phrase because I have many little skitty bits of subjects to write about, nothing worth a full entry. Chris and I have booked our 20th anniversary trip to Amsterdam, which makes me very happy. We'll b

Green Goddess Thanks

I've been meaning for a while to write an entry thanking everyone who has helped Chris with The Green Goddess. He's not only far happier than he was during his period of unemployment; he's even happier than he was at the Delachaise, because now he gets to be the asshole. (He isn't one, but that's how we often describe one of the perks and pitfalls of owning your own restaurant: "You've been working for assholes all your life, now you get to be the asshole." Did I use that somewhere in the Liquor

*snork*

My trashy summer reading has mostly consisted of Harlan Coben thrillers. I like his characters (especially Win in the Myron Bolitar books) and he tells a ripping good yarn (if sometimes one I feel I could map out with a flowchart before I've read it), but, bless his heart, he's not much of a stylist and occasionally gets very clunky, which judging from his copyright dates is likely the result of writing very fast. I liked this bit from One False Move:

Dear Mr. Slaughter:

We are in receip

Abilified

So I went to see my doctor about the Cymbalta's troublesome habit of fucking off to the corner bar three or four days a week. I thought she'd increase my dosage, but instead she convinced me to try some new "mood stabilizer" called Abilify (who gets paid to think of these names?). When I picked up the prescription, I learned that, were I to work up to the recommended daily dosage, it would cost $426 a month. CONTACT YOUR DOCTOR IMMEDIATELY if the fact that your crazy pills are costing your famil

So Sue Me

In case anyone thought otherwise, yesterday's entry was just a bit of silliness; I do not actually judge my characters by the Mary Sue Litmus Test. As greygirlbeast pointed out in her entry on the subject last night, the Mary Sue concept is stupid and essentially meaningless outside the context of fanfic. A reader commented on prime_liquor, "I love Lost Souls, but each and every character leans heavily on the Mary Sue level!" Well, maybe not each and every one -- the fun of being, say, Wallace o

Mary Sue

I took the Mary Sue Litmus Test for my earliest and most recent "biographical" characters. (I use "biographical" not to suggest that the characters' lives have resembled mine in any way, but because they were the characters I most identified with/felt I resembled while writing the stories in question.)

Nothing from Lost Souls:

Your Mary Sue Score: 100 (71 points or more: Irredeemable-Sue. You're going to have to start over, my friend. I know you want to keep writing, but no. Just no.)

Rickey from t

ATTENTION DAVE HAMMOND

No, not the evil waiter in D*U*C*K, but the guy who won the auction to have that character named after him. Despite the millions of eBay items you have so kindly bought from me, I cannot presently find your e-mail address, so this is just to let you know that, after an inexcusable delay, the signed ARC of Lost Souls from the person in New York is now on its way to you. Everyone else, please excuse the interruption.

WWL Interview

So here's me on teewee today. You have to watch a Ronnie Lamarque commercial first, but he's amusing; Chris and I once saw him dining at the late, lamented Hong Kong Restaurant & Lounge at the lake (a tiki paradise if ever there was one); we were starstruck and wanted to go over to his table and sing his jingle, "Bridgin' the gap! Ooo, ooo, ooo!", but ultimately we did not. And speaking of starstruck, at WWL-TV today I actually got to shake the hand of Jim Henderson, voice of the Saints!!!

Anyway

Ding Dong, The Wicked Witch Is Dead

Inventory: Cymbalta-failure crazy, check. Agony-inducing catch in the back, check. Garden despair, check. Sciatica flareup, check. Aimless self-weariness, check. Out of cookie-cutter-but-addictive Harlan Coben novels, check. Another New Orleans summer, no more pretending there might be one more nice cool spell, check. H*rr*c*n* season, check.

All this, and I gotta go be on TV tomorrow too. I don't want to, am in no shape to -- I'm as stiff as a board and as tranked as Kathleen Blanco after the le

Flirting With Connectivity

I still feel a certain aversion to the Internet (nothing in particular caused this; it just happens periodically), but I really do want to get back to reading my LJ friends list soon, as I miss y'all and am apt to wonder at odd moments, just to give a couple of examples, "What's txtriffidranch growing these days?" or "What Cthulhoid horror has greygirlbeast photographed on the beach lately?" My dad gave me a nice, new, comfy, not-yet-clawed-to-death desk chair, so I really have no excuse not to