Just ran across this one, while skimming excerpts of Beowulf in Old English: unbliðe. It’s translated as “joyless”, but I think that it would translate more literally and, I feel, poetically, to “unblithe”.

It tastes good on the tongue. Unblithe, with a soft, drawn out ‘th’ sound to lengthen the word and make it gentler, more intensely sorrowful.

Why didn’t we keep that one, I wonder?

The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities:Exhibits, Oddities, Images, and Stories from Top Authors and Artists contains work by a multiplicity of writers and artists, many of whom are very firmly in that circle of professional creators to which I have aspired to belong for as long as I can remember reading.

I’m in there. My name is in that book, printed in black and white between two hard covers, included in the same volume as Tad Williams, China Mieville and Michael Moorcock. And while my miniature contribution is easily overlooked, it’s in there, and it counts.

It feels… proper. Right, as in: correct. It’s where my name is supposed to be.

So sometime in the relatively near future, my name will be a little bigger, a little more prominent, closer to the front. It’ll be included in the list used to draw readers in and promote sales. It will be one that other writers, early in their careers just as I am now, point to and say “holy shit, I’m in a book with her!” It’ll be a name that, when readers see it, translates in their minds to “there are words in there, put together in an order that will draw me in and make me enjoy myself thoroughly for a while”!

I can’t wait.

Mad ego? Probably. Can you blame me? :3

Okay, I’m ready to consider the possibility that maybe at some point in the not-terribly-distant future I might be less incoherently upset with myself.

If– and this is a huge if, mind– I can go the fuck to sleep Jesus I need to sleep.

Dear brain: SHUT UP AND SHUT DOWN FOR THE NIGHT or we will no longer be friends. :|

If there is anything the last couple of years have taught me, it’s that this philosophy is a huge, steaming pile of bullshit. I am a loser and I will always be a fucking loser, and every time I try to get ahead, I will always come in second.

Why the fuck do I bother?

So it looks like my career shall begin in what we shall coyly term explicit romance. If anyone’s startled by this, the line forms to the left; take a number. I doubt they’ll hit double digits.

Heigh-ho, heigh-ho, it’s off to bed I go.

Used to have them in NY, before we moved down here… similar themes. I flew then, too.

My house burned down, this time. Big house, a composite of the houses I’ve lived in over my life; grandparents’ houses, aunts’ houses, certainly the house on Ray. Burned and abandoned with ghosts in it, dead friends or relatives that I didn’t bring with me, nameless and faceless now that I’m awake but bitter and angry in my dream. The house had burned and was blackened and ash-filled, and I’d gone back to salvage bits and bobs and things from the fridge, oddly. And escape meant flying on dragon-wings, leaving the ghosts behind with the lingering remnants and flying higher and away, following the damp from the firehoses that turned into rivulets and a swamp and then the ocean.

I’ve dreamt it twice, two consecutive nights.

Sequoia emerge from the ashes of forest fires. A friend of mine told me once that I’d do the same thing. Maybe it’s time.

I think I’m insane.

My brain is vaguely squishy now, however, and so I feel very strongly that it’s bedtime for bitchcakes.

Crossed fingers and toes for acceptance to the antho, and that will be three publication credits to my name, which makes bitchcakes very happy indeed.

Even if the editor doesn’t take it, it’s a damn good story and I know it. So there.

She stands, smoothing her slitted gown over her bestockinged thighs. The slice in the fabric nearly reaches her naval, and slides as she moves, a shifting peep-show that shows far too much but never quite …everything.

“You all tucked up, honey?” her mother asks, and the virgin queen reaches between her thighs, giving the space there a quick once-over with cherry-taloned fingertips. Nothing comes loose, and she strikes a pose. The line of her posture is nervously perfect, from the tip of her glittering stiletto pump to the peak of her lace-front bouffant. Someone must have bled on her lips to get that color of red, and her lashes are a falsely modest line against her carefully porcelained cheek as she shyly ducks her head and blows her mother a moue of a kiss.

“You’re beautiful,” whispers her mother through proud tears that threaten to make her eyeliner run, and with all the frightened determination of a robin in late spring, she nudges the virgin through the curtained door, down the dimly-lit hallway at the end of which the stage is waiting, dollar bills in hands around it, waiting for a garter to receive them.