Sooooo...tired.

Obviously, it’s been about a week, and Break Number Two is almost over. Shouts go to agincourtgirl for filling in at short notice on Tuesday during my meeting with producer Bill Burke—and yes, now that paper has been signed and money changed hands between us, I feel like I can let slip his name—and strange on the occasion of her wedding! A whole new world of pleasure and annoyance awaits you both.;)

As for the jovial Mr Burke and I, meanwhile, we’ve already hammered out what I think is a really interesting and potentially creative variant on my original No Vacancies script, which I first wrote at the age of 17 over a frenzied three-day period; granted, it had the amusement value of being jam-packed with sex envisioned from the POV of someone who’d never actually had any sex yet, but as those who’ve read it can probably attest, that sort of smirky high wears off pretty fast. By comparison, what we’re moving towards will hopefully be A) properly formatted, B) more than 70 pages long and C) not of the suck. That’s the plan, anyhow.

And what else have I been doing, you ask? Why, not too friggin’ much at all. Transcribed notes. Went on a "diet" (I cut sweets and bread out, yet again…and it certainly does seem to be doing me some good, though I’m also far more flatulent and insomniac than I recall being in months. I think I’m going to back it up over next week with a change my Mom’s been recommending for years, and stop eating after 6:00 PM). Got some ideas. Finally did the Fifth Term picks (today, at school, via three-way conference call with Andrew and Sherry), so at least THAT’s off my back. Bought more books than I should have, then read almost all of them within the last two days. Worked out, though not as much as I wanted to. Dealt with a snotty, snotty, snotty bobo. All that.

Last night, Steve and I finally watched The Proposition, which rocks very hard. It’s beautifully shot and acted, with great attention paid to how what happens offscreen affects what you see onscreen; the score is amazing (no surprise there), incorporating snippets of a poem I’m fairly sure I almost recognize, though Googling what little of it I remember hasn’t lead to anything concrete. And yes, it’s vicious and morally complex in that 1970’s way, but without any of the sprawling self-indulgence you expect from that particular decade. There’s a lot to like here, though possibly not if you’re Australian.

I’m glad to say that none of the books I bought have been anything less than entertaining, thus far. Stand-outs include Mo Hayder’s The Devil of Nanking, John Connolly’s Nocturnes (a collection of M.R. Jamesian short stories, plus one Charlie Parker novella), Chris Wooding’s YA "fairy tale" Poison (he also did The Haunting of Alaizabel Cray) and Sarah Payne’s Roots of Evil. Hayder and Payne in particular are both British pseudo-mystery writers whose whacktastic plots often verge on the supernatural without really broaching it—they remind me of old-school Sensation novelists, spinning multi-part and –character pulp/melodrama narratives out in cliffhanger increments. Everything that "airport books" should be, and so often aren’t. As I commented to Bill Burke at one point, the very least I expect from a book (especially a "mainstream" horror novel) is that it should be as easy to read and layered as Stephen King but as interesting and poetic/experimental as Peter Straub; Hayder manages both, while Payne at least gets the first. Maybe I should move to the U.K.;)

Well, that’s the sum-up. And like I said…tired. I worked out late, slid off the treadmill while woolgathering, may have strained something again…so adieux, y’all. I’m off.