Chickpea <
chic...@gmx.co.uk> wrote:
> In alt.polyamory, (Darkhawk (H. Nicoll)) wrote in
> <
1kf45t8.1ugnkko1es8zcwN%dark...@mindspring.com>::
>
> >I wrote a book. It was published today, becoming a capstone to a pretty
> >good birthday week.
>
> Tell us more!
About the book or the birthday? ;)
The book:
A number of years ago I was out to lunch with a co-religionist. After a
little bit of chatting, she confided to me, "I don't know what the
Egyptian Book of the Dead is." I said something like, "Well, uh, it's
like a cross between a grimoire, a hymnal, and 'The Lonely Planet Guide
to the Underworld'."
I posted about this to LJ and got a few responses the gist of which was,
"The Lonely Planet Guide to the Underworld? Ha! I'd buy that. You
should totally write that."
So I spent a few years doing so (copious research, lots of swearing;
Brooks said the observation of it looked a bit like his PhD process).
It's basically an exploration of the Egyptian Book of the Dead and the
culture that it emerged from written as a travel guidebook. I attempted
to get all three above aspects of the original Book in - there are three
praise-poems (hymnal), and each section of the book begins with a
rewrite of one of the spells from the Book in modern poetry. The text
is pretty much all deadpan humor. My quickie summary is that it's a
thesis-level exploration of the Egyptian Book of the Dead written in bad
jokes and limericks. (Actually there are only two limericks, IIRC, one
of which is quite appropriately about a penis. A lot of sonnets and
tanka, though. Also a fucking villanelle, and a goddamn terzanelle.)
I think it's hilarious, but I also have the specialised knowledge to get
the jokes. (My standard pull quote is pretty accessible, though: "When
you are packing for your trip, be sure to include whatever conveniences
and luxuries you want to have with you. For large items that would be
inconvenient to ship, such as boats or servants, small scale models will
be sufficient for your needs.")
I also achieved a level of friendly detente with my mother as part of
this project, and she did the interior art and the cover.
Book with advertising blurb can be viewed and even acquired here:
http://www.immanion-press.com/info/book.asp?id=424&referer=Hp
The birthday:
A couple days before my birthday I was going through back entries on
Livejournal and encountered someone putting up for sale a complete
collection of back issues of a magazine I've been wanting to snag for my
research, for a sum above what I thought we could afford. I emailed the
partner to confirm that, alas, we could not afford this.
Before I heard back from him, the Celt brought in the mail, which had
two parcels for me. One of them was my contributor's copy of a book I
had a poem included in (some time ago - the project died and was
resurrected and finally came out). The other was a thick envelope from
my father. The envelope contained photographs (mostly but not entirely
of my late cat), a bookmark, and a birthday-money check for the price of
the magazines.
(My actual birthday was kind of poor. But I spent a chunk of it
productively assembling a professional blog to go along with the book
release.)
The day after my birthday we went out to birthday dinner, and had some
very good food in a moderately inconvenient location. (I would really
like to have a Favorite Restaurant Dish that didn't require me to head
into the city, but apparently that is not something I get to win at.)
After dinner the Celt and I took the older kid a few blocks up the
street to the best pagan/esoteric bookstore in the Boston area, where I
enquired about whether or not the proprietor ever did author events. He
does not.
*However*, he is willing to stock my book, even though it is from a POD
press. First as a consignment deal, but if it sells well he will stock
it himself. This is amazing, as getting a brick-and-mortar to do stuff
from the sort of press my publisher is is kind of awesome and uncommon.
I bought a small pile of books, thanked him for being a bookstore that
actually had books that were useful, and agreed to bring some books in
for him to shelve at some point.
Sunday was a holiday in my religious calendar where I hadn't figured out
what to do yet, so I decided to read a section in one of the new books
about the deity whose festival it was. That included a pointer to
Herodotus describing the festival, so I looked up the passage in
Herodotus and suddenly knew what to do. That was kind of cool.
Somewhere in there I called my father to tell him what he'd gotten me
for my birthday. He was tickled by this, especially since he kind of
has a Thing for only acquiring complete sets of things.
Then yesterday my book came out between my emailing my birthday ex and
writing back to his response, so!
It was a good week overall.
- Darkhawk, full o' babble