Have a Horribly Happy All Hallow's Eve

From Cooper (a.k.a. Demon Cat)

and his spectral sidekick, Chopper Chook.

I can't help myself

I really should stop, but this one is just so damned funny. Here's another in my series of filched quotes from the NSW Writers' Centre's newsletters:

If the doctor told me I had six minutes to live, I'd type a little faster.

-Isaac Asimov

Two of a kind

First it was Game of Thrones making the often-derided, many-volumed fantasy genre featuring a cast of thousands cool with the general public. Now George R.R. Martin's Wild Cards superhero series is set to hit both big and small screens.

You can read about GRRM's latest ace here, and all over the internet.

Wooed by Woody

If I wasn't already a struggling writer, I'd certainly become one after seeing Midnight in Paris. Artistic suffering never looked so good.

Oh, for an attic studio somewhere just off the Champs-Élysées, convivial geniuses gathered in shabby-chic cafés, salons brimming with brilliant tête-à-têtes, and everywhere bons vivants spouting bon mots as sparkling as genuine French champagne.

Oh, and Gertrude Stein perusing my manuscripts in a motherly fashion would be nice too.

I know I said I wouldn't.

Possibly I was influenced by the upcoming Halloween horrors, and most assuredly it had to do with my needing something light and silly to brighten the past few weeks at the Arvo Job, but the fact remains that even though I swore a while back that I would not risk contaminating my pristine Austen with the popular mashups, I must confess that my lunchtime audio book at the moment is Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.

It's not entirely as amusing as I had hoped it would be, and some parts are heavy-handed and tedious, but it has elicited enough snorts and smirks to keep me listening. It's best when it pokes fun at women working hard to maintain their decorum under trying conditions i.e. slaying zombies, which, by the by, Austen herself does most beautifully without the aid of ninjas or the undead, but hey, where's the splatter and vomit in that? And apropos society's expectations of ladylike demureness and modesty, a literary parody that always makes me giggle is the Bret Harte version of Jane Eyre Miss Mix by Ch--l--tte Br--nte from 1867, which has great lines like: I saw from the way that he wiped his feet on my dress that he had again forgotten my presence and He seized a heavy candlestick, and threw it at me. I dodged it submissively, but firmly.

Anyway, the Bennett girls' reactions to the insufferable Mr Collins are especially entertaining, and I'm enjoying Lady Catherine's martial arts snobbery, which dictates that Japanese techniques are superior and desirable, whilst training with Chinese monks, as the less wealthy Bennett girls have done, is decidedly déclassé.

Lining up at the barrier

The upcoming weekend + Melbourne Cup public holiday (an Aussie horse race, one that famously 'stops the nation' for any non-racing, overseas visitors who might be wondering)+ an extra day off from the Arvo Job = FOUR days off in a row!

So I'm sharpening my keyboard, revving my brain, limbering up my characters, and organising my storylines in readiness. As soon as the starting gates open, I'll be off! It's time to hit that YA novel that still doesn't have a kick-ass title yet, and hit it hard. These things don't write themselves.

Pugilist poets

I started and left the Arvo JOb early yesterday, and braved the madness of peak hour commuting (blah!), to get home in time to attend the local Victorian heat of the Australian Poetry Slam 2011. I also wanted to meet up with people from the local writers' centre again. The Slam was a lot of fun, although not necessarily about the best poems winning so much as the best spoken-word performers. It was good to see poets of all shapes, sizes and ages, ranging from the painfully shy, whispering kind hunched over the microphone to the perennial, young-Byron types oozing confidence, waving their arms and loudly delivering highly polished acts. It's nice to know that some things never change, and that no matter how hi-tech, lazy-minded or complacent society becomes, there still exist genuine, sensitive, outraged, rebel poets to point out the beauty of life or slap us awake with their words.

But now I must go. I did much much chatting, drinking and chip eating, for poetry seems to call for that sort of thing, and my bed beckons.

Sidetracked

So I wasn't going to blog tonight, or even check up on other blogs, but I peeked at one, which led me to Mary Robinette Kowal's link to The Oregon Regency Society's very horsey post about side saddles, which also has lots of useful links, and voilà, before I knew it, I was reading interesting information about riding etiquette and making medieval saddles instead of closing up shop and getting to bed.

Still, it's fascinating stuff (riding side saddle is something my sister and I often talk about trying at some point) and very useful information for...well, I'll just have to write a story that involves someone, a heroine I suppose, leaping into a side saddle to justify all this mucking around in the middle of the night. Although, now that I think about it, having a hero gallop off riding side saddle might be more interesting.

I don't know about this jumping with a side saddle though. My spine hurts just thinking about it.

Infectious thoughts

I saw Steven Soderbergh's movie Contagion on the weekend. Travelling on the trains and trams today took on a decidedly ominous air. All those surfaces. All those sniffles. All those bodies. All that touching. All that breathing in and out. All those vectors. All that exchanging of DNA.

I didn't get phobic, but was mostly amused by my own sudden hyper-awareness of the perils of everyday modern living. Today we might catch a mere cold or flu from pushing the wrong door open, but tomorrow...

So sad the story of what might have been

So it's out now, the Anywhere But Earth anthology that I would absolutely have loved to have had a story in (I mean, just look at that unbelievably cool cover, all retro and rocket shippy) but since one actually has to submit something to be considered for such things (life is soooo unfair sometimes), well, that didn't happen.*Sniff*. However, let's not go there again (damn my obsessive tinkering, and damn those deadlines!) Instead, let's celebrate another fine contribution to the genre, which can be purchased here.

It's a fabulous TOC: Calie Voorhis ‘Murmer’, Cat Sparks ‘Beautiful’, Simon Petrie ‘Hatchway’, Lee Battersby ‘At the End There Was a Man’, Alan Baxter ‘Unexpected Launch’, Richard Harland ‘An Exhibition of the Plague’, Robert N Stephenson ‘Rains of la Strange’, Liz Argall ‘Maia Blue is Going Home’, Chris McMahon ‘Memories of Mars’, CJ Paget ‘Pink Ice in the Jovian Rings’, Penelope Love ‘SIBO’, Donna Maree Hanson ‘Beneath the Floating City’, Erin E Stocks ‘Lisse’, William RD Wood ‘Deuteronomy’, Robert Hood ‘Desert Madonna’, Steve de Beer ‘Psi World’, Damon Shaw ‘Continuity’, Wendy Waring ‘Alien Tears’, Patty Jansen ‘Poor Man’s Travel’, Jason Fischer ‘Eating Gnashdal’, Kim Westwood ‘By Any Other Name’, Brendan Duffy ‘Space Girl Blues’, TF Davenport ‘Oak with the Left Hand’, Sean McMullen ‘Spacebook’, Margo Lanagan ‘Yon Horned Moon’, Mark Rossiter ‘The Caretaker’, Jason Nahrung ‘Messiah on the Rock’, Angela Ambroz ‘Pyaar Kiya’, Steve Cameron ‘So Sad, the Lighthouse Keeper’

Congratulations Steve!

I'm especially looking forward to reading this story because, as I've mentioned before, I read SSTLK back when it was a brand new piece that Steve had whipped up for a workshop and submitted for critique. I'm sure it's quite a different story now, and it'll be fascinating to see what it evolved into.

A bird in the head

I'm doing long and busy days at the Arvo Job this week, so suddenly commuting is not much fun. Right now, trains = a chance to grab a nap rather that writing time. My harpy story is listlessly flapping its wings and squawking for attention somewhere in the back of my real world saturated brain, but it'll have to hang on. Still, at least I know it's there waiting for me.

So, one more loooong day. *yawn*

Tiptoe to the Tuber

I completely forgot to mention that Moonlight Tuber #3, which seems to be called Derek, is out now. It's free. And it's here.

While you're at it, you can also pop over for a freebie Aurealis #45 here. Apparently, this venerable old Aussie mag of over twenty years, which over a decade ago had the good taste to publish a science fiction story of mine called Voyage to Abydos, will eventually become a monthly emag. Editor Dirk Strasser (whose TAFE science fiction writing course I once attended for a semester and even got a certificate for, she casually name dropped) writes: Up until issue #44, the magazine has been confined by paper pages and the three dimensions of the book format. Now we've escaped. And there's no going back. We believe a publication devoted to fantasy and science fiction should be at the forefront of change. So here we are. Right on the edge.

So, electric Aurealis? Indeed the publishing times they are a changin'.

Hippo-ailuro-alektoro-therapy

After a rough week at the Arvo Job, some saddle time was just what the doctor ordered, although when I got up at 4.30 this morning, I had a hard time convincing myself that a session of hippotherapy would be more beneficial than sleeping in. Thank goodness I went. Alas, our usual, lovely Daylesford ride was unavailable this month (the owner is in hospital) so my sister Cindy and I headed off towards the Whittlesea-Wallan region to try out a new (for us) place that other riders have recommended. Funnily enough, when we got there we saw familiar faces, namely other Daylesfordian refugees also looking further afield for a dose of horse riding. After a shaky start, once we got used to the more chaotic nature of this new place, it turned out to be great fun. The horses were energetic and full of character, and we experienced riders split off from the main group and did some serious, pounding, landscape-as-a-passing-blur galloping as well lots of companionable chatting. We had a couple of High County Mountain Men old blokes as guides, and when they questioned my sister and me about the places we usually go riding, we found ourselves entangled in High Country Mountain Men politics that went back generations, the complexities of which we didn’t fully grasp, but a lot of it seemed to have to do with the filming of The Man from Snowy River. Believe you me, HCMM take the intrigues involved in the making of that film very seriously. Conversely, Daylesford and the other ‘lowland’ places we go riding didn’t interest them at all.
Because it was only a 3-4 hour ride, I got home this afternoon with enough time and sunshine left to head out into the backyard and grab some Xmas swing and cat and chicken therapy. During this chill out session, a great mystery was solved. Last week, I became aware of a perimeter breach when my cats went into intruder mode, lined up and all stared at the same spot. The chook then positioned herself behind this feline phalanx, looked over their crouched forms and also intently eyed the bushes (was she, I wondered, their backup chicken?), but I couldn’t see anything.

Today, following their communal gaze, I zoomed in with my camera. Keep looking, you'll see a rather mournful figure eventually, or click the photo to enlarge it. Poor thing, but, I’ll leave them all to sort it out. Still, watching the chicken using the cats as her heavies, her moving in with us suddenly makes strategic sense. Perhaps I should call her Commando Chook.

All in all, my little menagerie made me laugh, which really is the very best kind of medicine.

Goodreads giveaway

Do you covet a copy of The Year’s Best Australian Fantasy and Horror 2010, but are counting your cents at the moment? If so, then cross your fingers and toes, and head ye over to here for the Goodreads giveaway of said tome. You never know.

But be hasty. It all ends October 31, 2011.

Good to go

So the re-jigged opening paragraph for my recently accepted anthology story has been approved by the editor. I received the final proof and contract this morning.

It was a very nice start to the day.

Writing, not blogging

I'm busy writing a harpy story. I must get to bed so I can get up ASAP and write, go to the Arvo Job, come home and go to bed ASAP so I can get up and write, then go to the Arvo Job, come home...

You get the picture.

Mission Possible

My mission today, which I chose to accept, was to go over the edited proof of the story that has just been accepted for an anthology. The only real work was the editor's request to rejig the opening paragraph. The rest pretty much stays as submitted, which is always heartening.

Curious to know how long this particular tale has been in the works, I dug out my notebooks and discovered it was conceived 18/1-07 (from the other story ideas jotted down around that time, 3 of which have progressed to rough drafts, I can see I was smack in the middle of my 'I can write lighter/humorous stuff too' phase which came after producing a series of very dark and serious stories involving dystopias and environmental ruin). It didn't really amount to much until 13/3-09 when I discovered its present voice and structure. Then I had a ball rewriting the whole thing. Apart from the core idea, very little of the original story survives. After that, it was forged in the fire of nine, mostly nice, rejections, with each 'no' received after months and months and months of waiting. After each rejection, I polished it some more, until finally it found a home.

So, it only took 4 years and eight months to produce this particular 5400 word baby.

Blog Narcissus

Last night we did a double at the Star Cinema. First up was Submarine, which was amusing, but ever so self-consciously so.

The second feature was Werner Herzog’s amazing 2010 documentary Cave of Forgotten Dreams about the stunning Chauvet Caves in France and the people who work there (you have to love an archeologist who used to be a circus performer). “With all those pictures of horses and cats, that cave is just like my blog,” I said afterwards, being amusing, but ever so self-consciously so.

Still, who knows? Perhaps on a distant future day, some intrepid cyber-archeologist spelunking through the remnants of our Paleolithic Internet will follow a tenuous link, squeeze through a narrow portal, fall through a deep darkness of corrupted information, land with a thump in a site that was blocked off millennia before by successive landslides of more fashionable social media, and turn on his/her torch-program to illuminate my cat photos, horse pics, and writerly blatherings.

One thing is absolutely certain - in 30,000 years, they'll seem a lot more interesting than they do now. :)

Bards & Sages Quarterly, October 2011

It's out! It's out! My SF tale Quick Fix, is in the October 2011 issue of Bards and Sages, which has just hit the stands today. ***

Quick Fix is a light-hearted piece that, in between the usual sweat, tears and self-doubt, I had a lot fun writing. It was rejected twice before B&S snapped it up on its third outing. I got the idea 11/1-11 (love those notebooks), though the alien biology used as the story's foundation has been rattling around in my head for years. I just didn't know what to do with the concept. I thought these guys might eventually feature in a really really serious story about the end of the universe, and that they might even be humans in a different stage of evolution. Wrong and wrong! They are very much their own aliens.

I've also just received an email informing me that voting officially starts today for the Bards and Sages' 2011 Readers' Choice Awards, in which readers are invited to vote for the best short story of each issue. Winners are then offered a chance to republish their work in the annual Bardic Tales and Sage Advice anthology.

So if you've read and liked either Found in Translation (July issue) or Quick Fix and feel inclined to put in a good word for me, here's the voting link.

*** print link here
kindle link here

End of the Month Report: September

Submissions: 2 (but 1 of them was accepted, so that makes up for this abysmal effort, doesn't it?)
Rejections: 2
Acceptances: 1
Published: 0
Stories out in the wild, running through editorial meadows with the wind in their hair: 8
New stories completed: 0 (lots started though...)
Mood: Tired. Too much wrangling with mundane matters this month, and the ongoing quest to strike a balance between writing time and Real Life without sinking into abject poverty that all non-bestselling writers deal with on a daily basis has left me with a severe case of decision fatigue.