End of the Month Report: June 2011

Submissions: 4
Rejections: 4
Acceptances: 1
Published: 0
Stories out in the wild: 6
New stories completed: 2
Mood: Excited about my upcoming Annual July Winter Writing Break. Only one more day of Arvo Jobbing to go. Big writing projects here I come.

My most favourite writing topic

Sales! As in, I made one! Yay! Bards and Sages has accepted my SF story Quick Fix for their October 2011 issue.

I sent this story off to them soon after they accepted Found in Translation, thinking that perhaps I was pushing it a bit, and not at all sure how Quick Fix would be viewed because I had so much fun writing it, and as we all know, fun for me isn't always fun for the reader. QF is completely different from FIT, which is a darker and straighter piece, but lo and behold, you never know, B&S has purchased this frothy, intergalactic SF caper too, and just in time to make this month's status report.

They're baaaack

Oh yeah, my old pals the Doofhead neighbours are back from whatever bogan planet they've been visiting for the last 7-8 months. Each night this week, they've indulged in their favourite pastime, the it's-all-quiet-when-she-gets-home-to-lure-her-into-a-false-sense-of-security-then-twenty-minutes-later-we-hit-her-with-the-choppy-low-frequency-woofy-bass game. It's not as bad as last time, but building up, I think.

So, fun days ahead :(

In better news, my Spirit story (as in Mars rover) suddenly came together on the train today. It'll only be a littlie, but hopefully a goody.

Here we go again?

I might have to dig out and dust off the Doof Doof Diary. *sigh*

Me thinks the kiddies next door are testing the waters once more with their mighty sub-woofers. Great. Just in time for my AJWWB.

Hanging out for my hols

So I sent off the painted rabbit story for the first time today, then, after a spot of pruning, my one and only vamp story also went out. This will be the vamp story's fourth tryout (it was held for consideration by the last publication I submitted it to, but then released back to me because they couldn't find a place for it and it's not their policy to hold stories for longer than three months - drats!) I love my vamp story. I hope that eventually someone else does too.

The ideas are still coming, which is good, but I haven't really submitted much this month, and most of my writing has been done on the train on the way to the Arvo Job. This mid-year slump is normal. I usually slow down around May /June, then speed up again after the Annual July Winter Writing Break.

So bring it on. AJWWB here I come.

But first, one more looooong week of Arvo Jobbing.

Gotta love Le Guin

Ursula Le Guin, feisty as ever, on congressmen, crotches and crassness here.

What's that I see ahead?

Yawn.

June = Long days at the Arvo Job.

Thank goodness for the upcoming Annual July Winter Writing Break.

My second most favourite writing topic

Over at Book View Cafe Blog there's a post about rejections and getting over them :


The Writing Life: Letting Go, Moving On

Yay, I'm filthy rich!

I've always fantasised about a long lost uncle suddenly leaving me in his will, and it looks like that dream might have finally sort of come true.

You see, today I received a letter (not an email) from a barrister (sounds impressive) from Portugal (not Nigeria) informing me that he found my name while searching the public records for people with a similar (but not exactly the same?) surname as his late client Johannes Gitte (so I'm Gitte Gitte?) who died in 2004 boxing day Tsunami. Before his death, Johannes deposited eight million seven hundred and fifty-two US dollars (the fifty-two dollars certainly gives the amount a genuine feeling) in one box trunk / diplomatic personal treasure (huh?) with a security company in Spain (not Nigeria). The barrister now has to present an inheritor to the security company (what's the name of this mysterious company?) before the consignment gets confiscated or reverts to the Bureau of Diplomatic Security (oh no, there's a deadline! I won't have much time to think the matter through!) He suggests that I stand as next of kin, and he'll use his trusted position to secure the relevant documents that will assist my claims (that sounds a tad dodgy - this must be a genuine offer!) Anyway, it's all 100% risk free (phew!) and he's worked everything out (good, again I don't have to bother thinking about it) and once the consignment is released, he and I will share it 50/50.

FANTASTIC! That means my cut is four million three hundred and seventy six US dollars, I think (I'll hire a flunky to work it out for me)

So, the upshot is that I'll be quitting the Arvo Job tomorrow and will immediately start shopping around for a suitable castle (with a moat and drawbridge). Pretty soon I'll have as much time as I need to write whatever I want to write, and I can spent the rest of my time reading, drinking tea, patting cats, and riding my many beautiful paint ponies and palominos. I must say that I, Gitte Gitte, am looking forward to becoming mega rich.

So now if you'll excuse me, I must go email my barrister/partner in crime in Portugal (not Nigeria) so we can get the ball rolling on this matter before he finds someone else to take my place (oh no, another deadline! I'm so panicking! I might miss out on my millions!)

Deceiving appearances

People who crossed my path today and saw my blank expression and shuffling gait might have thought things along the lines of Oh, that poor, weary commuter or Poor, grey, soul-sucked, city office worker when in fact I was a happy and contented, but incredibly pooped and increasingly sore, horse rider having flashbacks of fields and sheep, gum trees blowing in the wind, sharp turns in the forest taken at high speed and logs that were jumped with ease.

Sometimes a zombie isn't a zombie.

Otherwise, I'm counting my rejections (aka the we-liked-it-buts), and eyeing the dwindling number of stories I've got out in the world strutting their stuff (or not). It's time for some serious submitting.

Horsies

We travelled in style to horse riding today in my sister's new car. Despite the drizzly weather, we had an excellent morning ride. There were just two other riders, both experienced and good company, and the horses were raring to go. After lunch, the weather was less wet, but still windy and chilly (thank goodness for drizzabones) and we set off at a brisk pace with 3 different riders who were also experienced and up for it.


However, just after we started out, our ride was waylaid by the horrible sound of a dog screaming in pain and fear, a sound which rang across the Daylsfordian countryside. We all wheeled about and galloped back the way we'd come, and saw a few other people leave their properties on the same quest as us. By the time we had almost zeroed in on the noise, it stopped. An older gentleman covered in blood appeared, a dog, big, young and gangly, limping at his side - the dog had tried to jump a fence, became tangled in the barb wire, and had been screaming and struggling while the old man was cutting it free.

So we resumed our ride. Clods of mud flew left, right and centre as we galloped up and down rolling hills, and then cantered through the Wombat Forest. My sister got plastered in the stuff. I kept further to the rear and remained reasonably clean :)

As for Foalwatch, I get a big F for my efforts today. There was the cutest filly, only 3 months old, in the coral this morning, but I didn't have my camera handy. By the time we returned from the first ride, the foal was elsewhere, and it was time for lunch. After the second ride, I wasn't up for traipsing across cold, windy, muddy, increasingly dark fields in search of a foaly photo op.

Full steam ahead

By Jove, there's a piece in the Saturday Age's Life & Style magazine that mentions brass, goggles, airships and corsets, and throws around names like Ada Lovlelace, Charles Babbage and Jeff VanderMeer. Steampunk has arrived! Soon the gents will be striding about the streets of Melbourne wearing top hats and ladies will be waggling their bustles.

Anyway, onwards into Sunday - horsies!

Mutual curiosity

Lately, when I pull back the kitchen curtains of a morning, I find the Chook waiting expectantly at the back door. She clucks a greeting, and yes, *sigh* I feed her.

Then she perches in the hedge about a meter from the kitchen window and watches us go about our daily routine for a goodly while before heading off to industriously peck about the garden and do other fowlish things.

How this freeloading chicken managed to insinuate herself upon our household, I'm not entirely sure.

Words of Writing Wisdom

By John Scalzi over at Whatever. Here's a snippet:

If you feel you must look at other writers’ careers, a suggestion: Look at more than one, and see what they have in common. What did Neil do that Ursula also did that Robert did too that Cherie is now doing? Look at the things that consistently appear in the careers of multiple authors, and you’ll find the things that might be worth incorporating into your own. As a warning, they are likely to be boring things like “write regularly,” or “minimize distractions” or some such, which are the “eat less, exercise more” of the writing career world. But that’s life for you.

So true.

Danish SF

I feel culturally obliged to get myself a copy of this book.

Many Danish authors place their stories in a local setting, and all of them have something to say in addition to “just” being entertaining. You will find philosophical parables, time travels, space yarns, alternate history and much more, as well as stories which in different ways come close to the literary mainstream.

You can read all about it here

Perhaps I should try to get a copy in Danish. I used to read SF in Danish. **

In other news, I finally finished the pink painted rabbit story. It took a bit longer than planned (doesn't it always?) because my great idea, once it left my head, turned into a flat revenge fantasy. So the whole thing was rewritten twice. My bad guy became a not-so-bad-guy, the good guy became a not-so-good-guy, a teeny love story was inserted, futuristic techno stuff was added, and the payback was twisted into something*. The pink painted bunny, however, remained. There are some things you just don't mess with.

* something different.
** I used to write SF in Danish too. I remember a tale about clones, a planet called New Rome, an SF version of Brutus wielding a knife... brilliant stuff!

All K'ed out

As mentioned in previous posts, I'm dealing with the bureaucracy and non-helpful customer services staff of two gas and electricity companies. This Kafkaesque nightmare has been going on for over five months now. Well, actually longer, but I was blissfully unaware of the havoc being wreaked with my accounts until early this year. Anyway, I spent this morning on the phone with one of the companies. Again. This time the problem should be fixed. Not like last time when it was supposed to have been fixed, or the times before that, because THIS time it REALLY should be fixed. The fixing involved me - surprise, surprise - making a compromise. Even though what happened wasn't my fault at all. So instead of everything being put back the way it was, I'm staying with the company that hijacked my account (for now) and will pay what I owe long as the bill arrives in my name. Not someone else's name. MY name. This is one of the many things they keep not getting right. I'm sort of hopeful they'll get it done this time because they don't have to strain themselves too much with any unreasonable requests that involve them actually putting things back the way they were before they started messing around with my accounts.

Anyway, we'll see.

*Sigh*

All geeked out

Continuum continues, but without me today. My brain, refreshed by all the SF & F talk at Continuum 7, decided it would rather spend the day at home writing. Also, I just couldn't get myself excited about getting out of bed at the crack of dawn and catching the early train to Melbourne this morning because that's what I'll be doing tomorrow morning, and the morning after, and the con finishes at 16.00, so here I am. And happy to be here too, I am.

As for Continuum 7, well, there were panels about the nature of writing, about writing tropes, about making money from writing (as per usual, the verdict was that it's difficult), about YA writing, about how networking can help you sell your writing, about the writing market for werewolves, vampires, zombies and other assorted monsters.

But it's important at these conventions to get away from all the earnest navel-gazing-about-writing panels and make sure one enjoys the fun of SF & F in all its forms (I still treasure fond memories of constructing a Lego Dalek at Worldcon.) So I also went to a get-together for chatting about Joss Whedon and all things Whedonesque (apparently you have to keep watching 'The Dollhouse' until episode 6, and then it all comes together and becomes the most brilliant series ever), saw clips of upcoming SF movies, and sat in on a live recording of 'The Writer and the Critic' podcast with Kirstyn McDermott, Ian Mond and their special guest Catherynne M Valente, who was one of the convention's GOHs. Unfortunately, I had to exit before the Q&A session to catch the Sunday night train home - drats.

Best of all, I went to a session with John Richards, who since 2006, together with co-writer Adam Richard, has pursued the goal of getting a new ABC comedy about a group of gay SF fans called Outland from the fund-it-yourself-with-unpaid-actors pilot (which starred Narelle Harris) to production stage. We got to be the first audience to see a couple of scenes from the series, and John was endearingly nervous that we might not like it. He needn't have worried - within seconds everyone was laughing. It was immediately obvious, as he had already said himself, that his two main influences were the BBC shows Spaced and The Book Group, both absolute favourites of mine. Each episode of Outland, as with The Book Group, takes place in a different member's home, and is also built up around a specific SF work - one of the two clips we saw used the grotty corridors and sense of lurking danger in a public housing towerblock to evoke the atmosphere of Alien. Very funny stuff.


Alas, even before it has aired, not everyone is getting the series. Yesterday, in the Sunday Age's magazine 'M' they did a few piece called 'The G Word' about how Aussie television is chary of writing in homosexual characters. The journo wrote about Outland: This new comedy from the ABC is all about geeky gay sci-fi fans. One the one hand, it's faintly dispiriting to have the gay characters portrayed as weird and marginal. On the upside, at least they're on TV.


The journo is utterly missing the point. The overarching joke is that the main characters are weird and marginal because they're top notch, every-breath-they-take sci-fi nerds obsessed with the minor details of mainstream and obscure SF works, not because of they're gay.

I love Christine Anu there in the middle as as the only woman, indigenous, wheelchair bound, tick-as-many-minority-boxes-as-possible-for-ultimate-SF-cred character.

Anyway, that was a fun session. Now, back to my day.

Conning along

So I've carried on Continuuming. With much reluctance, I had to leave to catch the last train home, which is at 22.15 on a Sunday. I would have like to have seen the 'Home-grown Talent' screenings they were showing at 23.00. Ah well.

Anyway, knackered now. More later.

Chatting at Continuum

After the Arvo Job yesterday evening, I walked up St Kilda Road to the city to catch a couple of hours of Continuum 7, the annual Melbourne speculative fiction and pop culture convention before catching a late train (the Friday Night Packed to the Roof Footy Special - aaaah!) home.

It was fantastic to let loose and talk shop with folk who also get genuinely excited about topics like markets, editors, rejections and, of course, those elusive acceptances. I caught up with Steve Cameron, whom I met at a weekend workshop held by Sean Williams a few years ago, and discovered that his story ‘So Sad, the Lighthouse Keeper’, after many rejections and rewrites, will be in Coeur de Lion's forthcoming science fiction anthology Anywhere But Earth. Colour me green with envy. I saw this story when it was but a baby, and it had everyone at the workshop talking then, so I look forward to seeing what it eventually morphed into.

I also caught up with a few people from the YOSF&F workshop held by Paul Collins last year, and we got to see Paul presented with the A Bertram Chandler Award for Lifetime Service to Australian Science Fiction. Afterwards he launched his latest YA title, Mole Hunt. I, naturally, have a signed copy.

Chat, chat, chat, it was all fun. Anyway, I must head for bed soon - there is much to do this lovely long Queen's Birthday weekend.

Blokes with beards

Checking out the science blogs whilst the Lawnmower Man makes a racket outside, I filched this handy chart for categorizing blokes with beards from Pharyngula. It's not only Science relevant, but applicable to SF & Fantasy, and might come in handy this weekend, although the trend for SF dudes these days seems to be bald or close-to-bald.



Keeping the theme, here are some quotes about beards and philosophers. Apparently Barba non facit philosophum. Or, as Aulus Gellius said, "I see the beard and cloak, but I don't yet see a philosopher."

Solitude and Participation

Over at SFWA (will I ever sell enough of the right stuff to the right places to become a member?) there’s a neat post about creative habits.

Go read it here.

I like the Nikola Tesla quote: “The mind is sharper and keener in seclusion and uninterrupted solitude. Originality thrives in seclusion free of outside influences beating upon us to cripple the creative mind. Be alone—that is the secret of invention: be alone, that is when ideas are born.”

But then, of course, to balance the equation, you need to get out and have coffee (make mine tea) with friends, go horse riding, or toddle off to Continuum 7 this upcoming long weekend.

This and that

So the weekend passed quickly and pleasantly with me doing a bit of this (cleaning, washing, more raking of leaves) and a spot of that (tea and chats at Apple Annie's, sauntering about the Farmers' Market, patting cats, and writing SF&F stories that will thrill and amaze the world.) I also did some reading and finished 'Following the Drum' by Annabel Venning about the lives of army wives and daughters past and present. If you're ever feeling sorry for yourself and think you're having a bad day, dip into this tome. The hellish conditions men, women, children and animals have suffered during battles and sieges throughout the ages utterly defy belief. I won't spoil anyone's Sunday evening by going into details.

Anyway, it's dark outside now and the rain is pounding down, perfect weather for turning on the heater and checking whether there are any stories fit for the regular Sunday evening submission session. Otherwise, I'm eyeing the inbox for responses to stories that have been out and about long enough to make me tentatively hopeful, and gearing up for Continuum 7, which starts on Friday.

And if chickens are your thing and you were wondering, the vagabond chook is still with us. She's taken to hanging out on the roof and teasing the cats from there.