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The weather in LA has been deeply odd lately. Last Monday we had a high downtown of 113 degrees--and today we have a high of 66, and it's raining. I am so happy to be wearing boots and long sleeves. The autumn weather is supposed to continue for a few days at least, to my delight.

Yesterday at Mystery and Imagination Bookstore, we celebrated the 10th anniversary of Strange Horizons with a reading and tea party. I read In Lieu of a Thank You. Samantha Henderson read her story "The Red Bride" and, with Kendall Evans, their Rhysling Award-winning poem "In the Astronaut Asylum." Deborah Kolodji and Kaolin Fire also read their work. It was a fun afternoon--plus there were cookies from Porto's Bakery!

Los Angeles is finally having summer weather, and I'm not thrilled. After all the June/July gloom, I feel quite disgruntled about actual August weather in August! The Garage Kitty seems to be handling it well, however.

Today I spent some quality time lazing around reading Georgette Heyer (Frederica). Also I watched the Stephen Frears' film of Cheri, which is gorgeous, though it mainly made me want to reread the book. (I've been longing to do a Colette binge reading/rereading.)

Yesterday I finished listening to the text-to-audio files of the Jo book, and this evening I finished writing up notes of What Works and What Really Doesn't. For some reason knowing that I will be hacking large swaths of text from the book fills me with glee. I've also been making notes for the new ending of the book (something else that fills me with glee, because I'd really missed Jo and Martin). Next up: brainstorming/outlining/etc. to figure out some solutions to other issues with the novel.

And tomorrow will be Henna Day!

Today I went to the Vista Theatre for a special screening of House of Dark Shadows (1970), the kickoff of this weekend's Dark Shadows Festival. I had worried I wouldn't find parking and gave myself lots of extra time for that. I easily found parking on a side street and then had to stand in line for over an hour in the broiling sun, ugh. (My shoulders are very sunburnt.)

Eventually Jonathan Frid arrived and put his handprints in the cement outside the movie theater. Then we finally got to go inside, and I had a great wide-rangingly geeky conversation with a couple from Chicago before the film started.

It was great fun to get to see House of Dark Shadows on a big screen in a movie house full of like-minded Dark Shadows fans, though, as I'd recalled, the film lacks the charm of the TV series. In its attempt to shoehorn a sprawling soap opera into a 90-minute film, the movie feels like a weird short-hand alternate universe of the TV show. It looks beautiful, and it has a polish the TV show lacks--no one stumbles over their lines--but the story moves at light speed, to the expense of the characters. ( 40 year old spoilers )

Tomorrow I'm off to Burbank for the Dark Shadows Festival!

Meanwhile, in Ryan's Hope-ville: the Writers' Strike of 1981 episodes have begun to reair on Soapnet. Goodbye subtle writing, hello bizarre melodrama!

It's a lovely summer weekend in LA, with the jacaranda trees dropping purple buds everywhere. Today I had a lovely brunch at Coffee Table with tesserae_--I had huevos rancheros, and later we split a piece of berry pie.

I just made a quick trip to Skylight Books. The parking gods smiled upon me, and I didn't have to waste any time circling around looking for a parking space. I bought Grace Paley's poetry book Fidelity, as I'm on a Paley kick.

I'm reading Whores on the Hill by Colleen Curran. This morning I finished reading Dodie Bellamy's essay pamphlet Barf Manifesto, which is marvelous and is a lot like talking to Dodie: "Professor X teaches a structural approach to writing a short story, with lots of shoulds and should nots. [I realize only now the deep subliminal connection my mind must be making with those 'knots,' the knots of mistake, that Bridget Riley told us about, encouraged us to put in our rugs, as it were--and here's that other word, the 'should nots,' of Professor X.] Students who'd worked with X turned in formulaic, dead stories--it's like they'd memorized a series of steps but were stomping around all rigid, like the zombie dancers at the beginning of Michael Jackson's 'Thriller' video. I'd come in and try to get them to tune in to the beat, to flounce around and sway their hips, and not worry so much about what their feet were doing--to get some kind of visceral connection going with their writing. So I said to Kevin, cattily, that Professor X destroyed students' souls..."

I didn't feel the earthquake, though I appear to be the only one. I think I was outside at the time, which tends to disguise the earthquakiness unless it's massive. But when I walked home from Gelson's, the Garage Kitty looked at me like, "What the hell was THAT?!"

I have pulled out some of my books on the suffragettes for research for my vampire suffragette short story. Discovered that I seem to have lost my book about Emily Wilding Davison and promptly ordered a used copy.

Now I'm heating up Trader Joe's rolled chicken tacos, which I will eat while watching more Dark Shadows. (OMG Maggie's GONE! Where could she BE?)

So far today has involved a semi heading straight at my car (I honked like mad, and then the driver bothered to notice I was there in time not to collide with me, and had the nerve to grin at me as he drove away!) and a bug in my food (which I fortunately noticed before I started eating, and the cafeteria gave me new food). Plus I'm fairly sleepy, due to staying up last night watching the 1949 version of Little Women on TCM (it was a lot better and more faithful to the book than I remembered, though casting an Italian as Professor Bhaer was a bit...odd).

I worked on chapter 25 during lunch. It's close to done, and I wish I could just continue working on it this afternoon. Maybe I can muster some energy for it this evening.

The weather continues to be insanely beautiful, to the delight of me and the Garage Kitty (and, probably, everyone else in LA).

This afternoon Patti Smith read from her memoir Just Kids at Skylight Books. I knew it would be a crowded event and feared I wouldn't be able to find parking. I found parking easily, but when I got to the bookshop nearly an hour before the reading, the place was already packed solid up to the door. They were directing people to the Skylight Annex two doors down, where they had a big screen set up for a simulcast, so that's where I went. I was a bit disappointed, but 1) I've seen Patti Smith perform several times before, mostly in fairly intimate venues and 2) I didn't really feel like being sardined in a crowd for hours, and the Annex, though crowded, was fairly comfortable. Anyway, Patti did a wonderful reading of various passages from the marvelous Just Kids (which she sprinkled with comments and a hilarious rendition of a bit of the Vanilla Fudge's version of "You Keep Me Hangin' On"), plus sang one song ("Grateful") and answered questions from the audience. A lovely event.

Now I must get back to revising chapter 24...

Today I made good progress on chapter 24 of the Jo book. I wrote about 850+ words, plus revised a lot of already existent words. Also, Jo and Martin made me cry a few times, which rarely happens to me during noveling. Now I can have tiramisu, and I can loll around reading for the rest of the evening.

So glad we had sunny skies today, though it was still fairly chilly by LA standards.

There's another great review of Shimmer's Clockwork Jungle Book issue. Of my story "The Clockwork Cat's Escape," the review says: "The shortest tale in the bunch, but most definitely one of the most heartfelt about knowing when to let go of something you love."

So I went to Skylight Books, where I bought the new Edmund White memoir about New York in the 1960s and 70s (novel research, and I can hardly wait to crack the covers) and Francine Prose's new book on Anne Frank. I always feel good buying books at Skylight, one of the few great independent bookstores left in LA.

Then I came home, and the Garage Kitty ran up and sang an aria to her great and tragic hunger, and I fed her salmon.

I am so happy that it finally feels like autumn in LA. In honor of which, I am baking Trader Joe's apple spice bread, and my apartment smells like cider.

However, I think the Garage Kitty is a little discombobulated by the change of weather. Hopefully the turkey Fancy Feast is making up for that.

Chapter 18 is, naturally, more complicated than I'd thought it would be. So, back to noveling until it's time to take the apple spice bread out of the oven and watch Mad Men.