Stories from Cynthia Asquith volume, Sapphire and Steel, Alex Chilton, ghosts, readiness

Saturday 2/17/24

New week begins.

Read G.W. Stonier's "The Memoirs of a Ghost" and Rosemary Timperley's "Christmas Meeting," both of which are to be found in Cynthia Asquith's The Second Ghost Book. Competently done stories, each with a couple of standout parts--thanks to the wisdom evinced in certain paragraphs of the former, and the wryly gentle, empathetic humor of the latter. Then again, you don't want standout parts--you want the whole thing to stand out. It's funny because these are solid stories, nothing amazing, and yet it would shocking to see anything by anyone right now featuring a single line of what one sees in each of them. It would never happen with this Creative Writing 101 drivel by these dilettantes.

Watching Sapphire and Steel, which purported to be a British children's program dealing with the supernatural that premiered in 1979, but it's rather frightening. Sort of like 1977's Children of the Stones, the piece about which I still need to finish. I may write something on this other series as well. The Children of the Stones piece, at least, will be in And the Skin Was Gone: Essays on Works of Horror Art.

Have been listening to mid-1970s Alex Chilton here at this early hour. I don't agree with anything I've seen written by anyone else regarding the music he made during that time period. "Harrowing" is the word everyone else uses. People just repeat what others say because they think they're expected to or they don't want anyone else to think they thought something wrong. It's not harrowing. It's hopeful.

Thinking about this volume or volumes of ghost stories; what I have, what I need to go back into, what has to be finished, stories I know I'll be writing.

Doing push-ups in the hall in-between everything.

I'll probably grab a little sleep, simply because there's just so much to do and I have to be ready.