No, seriously. Vampyroteuthis infernalis:



(courtesy TONMO.com: The Octopus News Magazine).

Tiny little perching pterosaurs.



***

Turning off my AirPort seems to have helped my productivity these last two days. Not so much helping with the gig-searching.

Two more pages to hit my day's goal, though. Off it goes for now.

It's a jerboa, found in the Gobi Desert and caught on video for the first time in all its burrowing, kangaroo-hopping glory.



Meanwhile, I'm revising the last chapter of my book. In the first go-round (as well as the second and third go-rounds), I trashed the entire planet pretty badly. Readers have commented that a less apocalyptic trashing of the planet might be more satisfying. For me, having cut my SF-nal teeth on the Planet of the Apes movies (as well as the novelizations, and, especially, the action figures), post-apocalypse is pretty cozy territory. Grr. Argh. Contemplate.

Somewhere recently, Ellen Datlow said that most (or maybe it was just many) short story writers have a career span of 4-7 years, because they tend either to disappear entirely or transition to novels. I could be misquoting her (sorry, Ellen!), but I think that was the gist of it. I know my short story production has rather drastically declined since I started focusing on novels about a year and a half ago, and I started publishing shorts in pro markets around 2001 or so, so I think I'm due to fade away now.

So, if you ever liked my short stories, I'd like to say to you good-bye now.

Or else, since I finished the first draft of the Norse novel this week, maybe I could spend the next couple of months trying to bang out a few short stories.

I think I'll do that.

I'm going to get started on that right now.

***

I think cryptozoologist Ivan Mackerle has crafted for himself a very interesting life, even if he's never found a cryptid.

Reports have surfaced of Amazonian cannibals there, he says. “Women walking naked through the jungle with spears.” In order to repopulate, Mackerle adds, “Sometimes they grab men from villages. … Then the men are ritually killed and eaten.”

A military officer from Jakarta has investigated the reports but failed to find any Amazons. It’s likely a myth, Mackerle says with a youthful snicker. “But it’s very good for the newspaper, a good story with all the sex and nudity.”

The Amazons are a pretext, anyway. There’s another reason Mackerle is going to Papua New Guinea: Unconfirmed reports of pterodactyls soaring through the jungle’s canopy. Their skin is fluorescent, they say; as the dinosaurs whisper through the air at night, they glow.