“Red Wind”, Raymond Chandler

There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands’ necks. Anything can happen. You can even get a full glass of beer at a cocktail lounge.

That’s the opening to Raymond Chandler’s “Red Wind“, a story published 78 years ago, back in 1938. I dug it up again for the opening quote and (re)discovered that it is very hard to stop reading at the opening paragraph.

Chandler wrote a lot of things worth reading, but for a quick like summary I’ll mention his short story “The King in Yellow“–no relation whatsoever to the play I usually geek about, but the title always makes me grin. He also wrote the essay “The Art of Murder“, which is an interesting read, as well as the source of the oft-quoted line “[D]own these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid.”

Image is “Jupiter Morning“, by merrickb, used under the CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 license

Marking time.

Light of my life appears to have gotten my Kobo working, which is wonderful.  My favourite short story on it came off Smashwords, and I was getting really frustrated with not having it handy.

(Oh, there’s a word count on this!  Handy.)

Taking advice on practicing time management; seeing if I can get down 200 words a day, reliably, until the end of October.

Other concerns ATM: very much behind on Excolo roundup, not enough sleep, top-to-bottom housecleaning due by Thursday night, work screw-up, general failure to write.

Writing a story with a friend, and between our schedules it’s bogging down.  Need to talk to her to find out how she feels about my writing pieces of it alone, or stories that use the set-up we’ve created.  I can see her disliking the idea, although I don’t think it’s likely.  I cannot see being comfortable with just going ahead with it without asking her.

Also for consideration: am I using this as an excuse to procrastinate?

I have a handful of ideas for Iolace, and two stories.  Unsurprisingly enough, neither of them is written yet.

Trying to coordinate my various journals, accounts, feeds, and any other ways that I track what people are doing online.  I like having them, but having them all over the place is not useful.  Not entirely sure how or if this will fit in with that; I’m hoping that if I organize everything else, this will naturally settle into its own niche.