Wicca, magick, comparative mythology, faeries, film, palaeontology, geology, zoology, cosmology, parahumans, morphological freedom, body art, body modification, Modernist poets, Pre-Raphaelite painters, Impressionists, Lovecraft and other Weird writers, enviromentalism, animal rights, architecture (19th and early 20th Century), science fiction, dark fantasy, Charles Fort, costuming, shamanism, anti-fashion, antiques, bd/sm, Wikipedia, bodypainting, cryptozoology, paranormal, tattoos, piercing, found art, Burning Man, grail mythos, Celtic mythology, clean water, clean air, clean soil, New Orleans, Dublin, Manhattan, Symbolism, Irish history and politics, D&D, costuming, SFX make-up, Playstation 2, X-Box, Final Fantasy X and X-2, old monster movies, old graveyards, Victorian and Edwardian fashion, worldbuilding, androgeny, etymology, New England, beachcombing, trains, zero population growth, extreme body modification, parahumans, chimerae, monstrosity, freak shows, mermaids, werewolves, fighting hatred and prejudice, a world without gender, Rudoplh Zallinger, Charles R. Knight, museums, Victorians, Edwardians, candy making, cooking, Gaelic (Irish), the Marx Bros., snakes, John Steinbeck, volcanoes, thunderstorms, the vasty deep, pirates, hoaxes, UFOlogy, bronze sculpture, Van Gogh, Vlad Tepes, collecting Altoids tins, Alphonse Mucha, very old books, the Hudson River Valley, herpetology, collecting skulls of many species, morbidity, cetaceans, Nebari (the people and the planet), comics, Japan, debunking creationism, cellos and violins and violas, Tiffany lamps, Spooky.
Music
The Dresden Dolls, Rasputina, VNV Nation, Nightwish, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Nirvana, Patti Smith, The Pogues, Poe, Sisters of Mercy, Bauhaus, Belly, Tom Waits, NIN, Nirvana, Apoptygma Berzerk, P. J. Harvey, R.E.M., U2, The Decemberists, David Bowie, Concrete Blonde, Gravenhurst, Catherine Wheel, Kate Bush, They Might Be Giants, Clan of Xylox, This Mortal Coil, Dead Can Dance, Bel Canto, Future Bible Heroes, Depeche Mode, Icon of Coil, The Swans, The Cure, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Mira, The Changelings, The Swans, Radiohead, Pink Floyd, Big Country, A-ha, Ministry, The Cranes, Psychedelic Furs, Jethro Tull, Bjork, The Smashing Pumpkins, Fleetwood Mac, The Eurythmics, Brian Eno, Malice Mizer, Annie Lennox, Johnny Cash, Bob Dylan, The Police, Joy Division, Danielle Dax, Buddy Holly, Nosferatu, Elvis Costello, Fields of the Nephilim, Bob Dylan, The Shroud, Coil, Mors Syphilitica, And Also the Trees, Faith and the Muse, Android Lust.
Movies
Alien, Blade Runner, Pitch Black, The Lord of the Rings, Bringing Up Baby, Key Largo, John Carpenter's The Thing, Casablanca, Lawrence of Arabia, The Bridge Over the River Kwai, Dr. Zhivago, Pulp Fiction, Dark City, Heaven's Gate, Gladiator, The Aviator, Reptilicus, Far Away, So Close, Moulin Rouge, The Fifth Element, Kill Bill, The Nightmare Before Xmas, Bram Stoker's Dracula, The Matrix, The Professional, The Empire Strikes Back, Lust for Life, The Crow, The Usual Suspects, Night of the Hunter, The Haunting, Arsenic and Old Lace, Children of Men, The Fountain, Tideland, Pan's Labyrinth, Peter Jackson's King Kong, Serenity, Lost Highway, Miller's Crossing, Inherit the Wind, For Whom the Bell Tolls, The Snows of Kilamanjaro, To Kill a Mockingbird, Stalag 17, Soylent Green, 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Creature from the Black Lagoon, Once Upon a Time in the West, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, On the Beach.
Television
Farscape, Battlestar Galactica (new series), The Sopranos, Deadwood, Project Runway, Good Eats, Nature, Nova, science documentaries, Survivorman, Iron Chef and Iron Chef America, Dead Like Me, Firefly, Mythbusters, The Dresden Files, Heroes.
Books
Wicked (Gregory Maguire), House of Leaves (Mark Z. Danielewski), Something Wicked This Way Comes (Ray Bradbury), The Stand (Stephen King), The Dunwich Horrir and Others (Ray Bradbury), Dracula (Bram Stoker), The Lord of the Rings (J. R. R. Tolkien), Ancient Images (Ramsey Campbell), We Have Always Lived in the Castle (Shirley Jackson), The Chronicles of Narnia (C. S. Lewis), Childhood's End (Arcthur C. Clarke), Deathbird Stories (Harlan Ellison), Skin (Kathe Koja), The Hero With a Thousand Faces (Joseph Campbell), Ghost Story (Peter Straub), McElligot's Pool (Dr. Seuss), Sweet Thursday (John Steinbeck), The King of Elfland's Daughter (Lord Dunsany), The Silmarillion (J. R. R. Tolkien), Junky (William S. Burroughs), The Nightmare Factory (Thomas Ligotti), Burning Your Boats (Angela Carter), Geek Love (Katherine Dunn), One Morning in Maine (Robert McCloskey), The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant (first series; Stephen R. Donaldson), Watership Down (Richard Addams), Dune (Frank Herbert), The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (Carson McCullers), To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee), In Cold Blood (Truman Copote), Light in August (William Faulkner), For Whon the Bell Tolls (Ernest Hemingway), The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald), Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte), Generation X (Douglas Coupland), Pussy, King of the Pirates (Kathy Acker), Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (Philip K. Dick), The Road (Cormac McCarthy).
Heroes
Oscar Wilde, Albert Einstein, Stephen Jay Gould, Carl Sagan, Ray Bradbury, Stephen Hawking, T. S. Eliot, Chiana ni'glecti Mericale, Aragorn, Greenpeace, Richard P. Riddick, Frank Capra, John Ford, Charles Fort, Charles Darwin, Ellen Ripley, Virginia Woolf, Harlan Ellison, The Amazing Randi, Shirley Jackson, Spooky, Joss Whedon, Peter Straub, Santino Rice, James Joyce, John Steinbeck, Jada, Joseph Campbell, Dr. Seuss, Louis Leakey, Jane Goodall, Diane Fosse, Flannery O'Connor, Maurice Sendak, Edward Gorey, Grendel, Waterhouse Hawkins, King Kong, Eowyn, Amelia Earhart, Margaret Mead, Harry Houdini, Edward Drinker Cope, Thomas Huxley, Brian Froud, Captain Spaulding, Sirius Black.
Do NOT kill your heroes.
I write fiction as Caitlín R. Kiernan. To date, I've published six novels and about 70 short stories, collected in five collections. My seventh novel, Daughter of Hounds, will be released in 2007.
I'm a moderately successful novelist and author of short stories. Moderately successful means that I can support myself with the income from my publishing, and that I've won a few awards, and the critics usually like me. But I am not a "horror writer." This is a common misconception, and one that I try to steer present and potential readers away from. I am just a writer. My most recent novel is Daughter of Hounds (January 2007), and my most recent short-fiction collection is Alabaster (August 2006). I've also worked as a palaeontologist and have published numerous scientific papers, including the description of a new mosasaur from Alabama. I was born in May 1964 near Dublin, Eire, but have spent most of my life in the southeastern US. I attended college at the University of Alabama in Birmingham and the University of Colorado (Boulder). I'm tall. Keeping my secret Nebari identity a secret is an increasingly low priority. I'm into body art and modification. I'm a lesbian. I'm also a lapsed vegetarian, though the two things are unconnected. I adore film and read as much as I can, which is not as much as I'd like. I have an enormous fossil collection. I'm something of a Mac addict, since about 1986 (Apple IIE), and now write on an iMac. I live with my partner, Kathryn A. Pollnac (photographer and doll-maker), a dwarf winter white hamster, and my Siamese/Tonkinese cat, Hubero Padfoot Wu. I have been a neoVictorian prude and a sexual libertine. I'm not fond of eggplant. Or tapioca. Or sweetbreads. I love Thai food. The pink make-up I wear fools most humans. I want to believe, but don't. I avoid Xtianity in all its forms like the plague. In fact, I avoid all patrifocal religions. I don't smoke, and while I do support public bans on smoking, I have no problem with what people do in the privacy of their own homes. I support the legalization of most illegal drugs. I spent almost a year of my life singing and writing songs for a band in Athens, Georgia ('96-'97). I have a film agent, but so far nothing's come of it. I detest many things: humanity, flourescent lighting, fast food, Wal-Mart culture, Republicans, neocons, Starbucks, the Age of Irony, ill-behaved audiences, the use of plastic when paper or glass would work just as well, shoddy workmanship, bad television, leafblowers, Dean Koontz, Oprah Winfrey, ignorance, creationism (and "intelligent design"), and wastefulness in all its guises. I support all forms of morphological freedom. Politically, I'm somewhere between a liberal Democrat and a socialist. Shakespeare rocks my socks. I prefer Daffy Duck to Bugs Bunny, Chaplin to Keaton, Coke to Pepsi, the Marx Bros. to the Stooges, antique typewriters to laptops, hardwood to carpeting, Doc Martens to all other shoes, talent to craft, paper to plastic, mustard to ketchup, and Anne Sexton to Sylvia Plath (tho' Miss Plath is fine, too). My favourite liqeuer is absinthe. My favourite beers are Guinness and Bass. I would much rather travel by rail than by air. I've read Ulysses three times, cover to cover, but Dubliners is my favourite Joyce. I live in Providence, Rhode Island. I don't go to many shows because crowds annoy me. In fact, I don't get out much. I didn't set out to become a recluse. It just sort of happened. I am fascinated by Antarctica, and Mars is my favorite planet. Europa is my favourite moon, with Titan a close second. Global warming is a reality.
You can see my WitchVox profile here.
Who I'd like to meet: I'm not restricting myself to the living...David Bowie (first and foremost!), H. P. Lovecraft, Lemony Snicket, Stephen Hawking, Johnny Depp, Tim Burton, Brain Eno, Laurie Anderson, Ray Harryhausen, Terry Gilliam, Colin Maloy, Werner Herzog, Tom Waits, Harry Houdini, Gilbert and Sullivan, Gregory Maguire, Penn and Teller, Margaret Atwood, Ursula K. LeGuin, Madelaine LeEngle, Edward Gorey, The Decemberists, H. R. Giger, W. B. Yeats, Angelina Jolie, William Blake, Charles Darwin, Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins, Thomas Huxley, Algernon Blackwood, Dr. Seuss, Henry Fonda, Lauren Bacall.
Well, I would love read anything written by someone whose read Ulysses three times... though I'll admit that I'm a bit partial to the Epic of Gilgamesh myself.
Ordered Alabaster this morning.
Very pleased to have gained you as an online friend.
It's coming...and features Caitlin R. Kiernan's list of the "13 of the Top 10 Lovecraftian Films Not Actually Based (or Only Loosely Based) on the Works of H.P. Lovecraft"... ..
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