Other than previous sad post, today is just a day. Do you know what I mean? A kind of nothingness day. Because it's a holiday (I think it's "How-we-gave-Native-Americans-small-pox Day," if I'm not mistaken) there's a ghastly emptiness on my streets and even in my neighborhood--which makes no sense, because it's the kind of 'hood where people stay in on holidays and so it should be a bustle of lawnmowers and leafblowers taking advantage of this gorgeous Indian Summer day. The kind of day that ALMOST makes you know what it would feel like if you were down in your root cellar looking for the chocolate you stashed when the big one went off, thus sentencing you to being the Last Person On Earth.

E. and I had frozen yogurt downtown, then we hung out at Copperfield's Books where I learned the alleged details of Jessica's Simpson's split from hubster, the supposed "war" between Angelina and Jen, and decided, to my surprise, that Paris Hilton did look better in the backless black Armani dress than Gwen Stefani. Paris has got an album coming out soon, you know. Not a photo album, either I'm sorry to say. I can't decide which I'm more excited about, her album or Brittney & Kevin's bootleg sex tape. (You can't tell me that people who video themselves screwing DON'T want it to eventually get out to the public. How does this happen? They "accidentally" leave it out, marked "Our hot monkey love" in the tour bus, I'm sure).

I've discovered that on days where I just don't want to work that I get a lot of random bits of flotsam in my brain that feel like small epiphanies. Things that, by the time I sit down here to blog, are all but gone. It really sucks that because Columbus sailed a few ships, I don't get any mail today.

Oh, I remember what I wanted to blog about! You see, the new project I'm working on while SBF percolates and brews, is another novel of course (because I'm hopeless at the short story, I've decided), which is first and foremost a love story with a slightly, well, paranormal edge, but not really. I never knew how fucking hard it is to write about love without getting all smarmy, sentimental or slipping into out and out bad erotica. It's a fine line, and I'm having a hard time handling it. To me the best way to write a love story is to put a lot of obstacles between the lovebirds...not to go Romeo & Juliette on them, but enough that the reader wants them to get together. But then you have to give something or the reader is thinking, "these two are NEVER going to get it on, so what's the point." So I've got some juicy obstacles, but then they seem to run into the realm of being too outlandish, so I'm working to balance all these crazy threads, while ultimately delivering the possibility that these two people can have a future together. It's maddening. But also fun. And since I'm only drafting, not getting all hard core and serious yet, it's okay. I don't have to commit to getting it all right.

Right?

JPR