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a writer's notebook

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Author: Warren Ellis

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14feb23

Warren Ellisstatus
v-day gift

ON DECK: finished up first tranche of consulting job yesterday. Today is for the potting of tomato seedlings and the drilling of holes in containers and the starting of pea seeds in the propagator. Later, I may make a start on the polish drafts of DEPARTMENT OF MIDNIGHT, as we’re getting closer to recording time. And I do need to revise a pitch document. But, right now, I want to get out of the office chair for a bit and be useful in other ways.
INBOX: 78
LISTENING: Radio 3 In Concert. Educating myself.
SHIPPING FORECAST: Taking today for myself.

Pulp Cosmologies

Warren Ellismorning computer

John Coulthart on the novel THE ZEN GUN, a book he’d previously avoided for pretty much exactly the same reasons I’ve avoided it. He notes, that, as ever, Bruce Sterling gives good quote that draws the eye:

Yet Bayley’s elemental energy, his mastery of the sense of wonder, cannot be denied. His work is the very antithesis of tired hackdom. To invent an entire self-consistent cosmology and physics for a $2.50 DAW paperback…is one of those noble acts of selfless altruism that keep SF alive.

Book designer WH Chong on covers for Le Guin, Asimov, Herbert

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(via)

Dennis Potter’s Last Interview

Warren Ellistv

I return to this from time to time. Dennis Potter was one of the great television writers. In 1994, he learned he had cancer. He resolved to finish his last works, and undertook a final interview with Melvyn Bragg for Channel 4 just before completing them, to close out his writing life. Afterwards, a transcript of the interview was released, which I still have somewhere. I remember being spellbound in front of a little tv set, watching it without getting up once.

There’s a piece early on when he talks about, in full knowledge of his impending death, looking at the plum tree in blossom outside his window, and seeing it anew as “the whitest, frothiest, blossomest blossom that there ever could be.” And that’s when I started spending five minutes every day for myself to just look around.

This remains, for me, both an elevating and a heartbreaking watch. Even now.

13feb23

Warren Ellisstatus

Got the new mini-greenhouse up yesterday, planted some bulbs, got the blackberries into containers, dumped the last of the compost into the pollinator area so I can sow next month. Newsletter went out yesterday too.

ON DECK: aiming to finish the first tranche of consult job documents today so that I can have my brain back for the rest of the week. I want to be potting up tomato seedlings from the hydroponic propagator into this mini greenhouse tomorrow, and sowing peas and other things. Also, I have two more bare-root apple trees arriving this week, to complete the pollinator bridge.
INBOX: 71. Absolute disaster.
LISTENING: VOICES OF FORGOTTEN WORLDS
READING: A MOUNTAIN TO THE NORTH, Krasznahorkai

SHIPPING FORECAST: I have a post in the scheduler for later, and a bunch of notes to type up. But first, work.

Codes And Secrets

Warren Ellismorning computer

Mary Queen of Scots wrote in code.

Roman dodecahedrons may have been used for secret sorcery:

Its magical purpose could be explained by a variety of factors. First, dodecahedrons were mostly found in the Gallo-Roman Empire, an offshoot of the Roman Empire in which magic rituals were known to have taken place. The lack of written records about dodecahedrons may point to a need to use these objects in secret, as divination and magic rituals were punished severely in the Roman Empire. Dodecahedrons have often been found near burial sites, where these rituals may have taken place.

9feb23

Warren Ellisstatus

Tell that to the rain.

I’ve delivered three script documents in four days. The next one is going to be intensive, so I need to slow down a little bit. Inbox 75. Catching up with all the things today.

8feb23

Warren Ellisstatus

Heavy fog this morning, and a lot of overnight animal damage to the garden, which means I have a lot more to do during daylight than I planned on.

ON DECK: consult job, re-marking the boards
INBOX: 71, it’s also an email day, I’m around and picking up.

SHIPPING FORECAST: Dunno. Let’s see what happens.

Catasterization

Warren Ellisquotes

Catasterization signals an end to the era of metamorphosis. When someone can no longer be transformed, but has to be saved, he is cast into a star. In the world of Zeus, these are the cases where there is no other way out. So it could be said that life on earth was constellated with stories suspended, attached to the vault of the sky. For the Vedic people, what took place in space among Sirius, Orion, Aldebaran, and the Pleiades was the scene that preceded every other scene and coincided with the manifestation of that which appears. Between Rudra, Prajāpati, Uṣas, and the Devas, astonished spectators, was the space where all that was essential to know took place.

THE CELESTIAL HUNTER, Roberto Calasso

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