wildcat

In the middle of cleaning the kitchen, because they've moved out and Christian's in Vancouver. House to myself, and now "moving out" for Michelle and Mike is winding down, I can start getting the house to look half-way decent. Started with the kitchen. Stuck in the kitchen; stuck with the microwave door open, attacking the baked on chemical grotesquerie left-over from an accident Michelle had with a bag of popcorn. Why shouldn't couldn't be bothered to clean it up at the time is beyond me, but the nastiness must go! I thought I was doing fine until I looked up at the ceiling of the microwave and saw Hell. Won't even mention what was behind the microwave.

In the middle of Dashiel Hammett's The Red Harvest. Very direct, masculine, and slightly gay in its descriptive passages. Enjoying it; the novel is intensely readable. Four more to read after this one, including The Maltese Falcon. His prose is so clear without being showy - the square-jawed pulp vibe. I have a plan for my 102-page novel, the one I'm writing probably next month for a week; it's going to be a Hammett-esque detective thriller staring Teiresias Jones and Johnny Damocles. Already have the basic description of Teiresias's look in my head, although I can't really do anything about it until I finish the first draft of this science fiction piece I'm writing.