End of the Month Report: March 2014

Submissions: 3
Rejections: 1
Acceptances: 0 (but I did get a hold request which is looking pretty good)
Published: 0
Stories out in the wild: 8
New stories completed: 1
Mood: What happened to March? Where did it go?

Look What I Just Found:

I was just checking on a link repair, when I discovered they'd put up the cover for the first issue of Lakeside Circus:

 

 

It's odd - my stories are often labelled creepy, and yet I never set out to write creepy. It just sort of happens. Creepy.

There Went That Sunday

After a morning of reading, I've just spent almost 4 hours finishing up a story for the funny anthology and sending it. I keep trying to get into this antho (this is my second sub for this round). I've almost made it a couple of times, but never quite. It's a bone I won't let go of, unfortunately. A challenge I want to conquer, I suppose you could also call it. Possibly a waste of a Sunday, you might also insinuate, or a delusion I won't get real about (Funny! Hah!) The upshot of this writing frenzy is that I haven't done a single domestic thing around the house, and must now get a move on to fit in a few mundane practicalities before the sun goes down.

Still, I had fun :) Even if the funny folk at the funny antho don't think it's funny...

And in a feel-good addendum, exactly just as I hit send, an email came in about a horror story that might be published if I'm amendable to minor edits - but it's still just a great big MIGHT. Anyway, I'm grinning because the first of the three comments from an editor reads: An elegant and technically precise story; excellent core concept and well maintained rhythm throughout.

Nice. I love a little praise on a Sunday. Or anytime :) See, I put in another smiley face. It's that kind of a day. I'm a bit high on writing, me thinks.

Now, where's my vacuum cleaner? I know it should be in the house somewhere...

***18.40 update. There, housework time wasn't a complete bust. Whilst ironing, I came up with a vague idea for a dieselpunk story, the name of the main character, and a first line that pleases me immensely. Now for the rest of it. I'll play with it tomorrow on the train. It's going to be a nasty one...

Space in the Seventies.

As I've mentioned a few times, according to my childhood ambitions, I should be working on the Moon by now. Or commuting from my otherworldly Arvo Job to my groovy pad in the swankiest district of the hippest, domed metropolis on the Martian plains. At the very least, I should be living on a cool, colony habitat orbiting Jupiter or some distant star.

If you want to relive that dream, pop over to http://publicdomainreview.org/collections/space-colony-art-from-the-1970s/  and see what the future used to look like.

 Forests.

But in space!

In the 1970′s the Princeton physicist Gerard O’Neill with the help of NASA Ames Research Center and Stanford University held a series of space colony summer studies which explored the possibilities of humans living in giant orbiting spaceships. Colonies housing about 10,000 people were designed and a number of artistic renderings of the concepts were made.

Suddenly The Chook Seems Eminently Manageable

It stood 11.5-feet tall and tipped the scales at perhaps 500 pounds, with the body of a raptor, the head of a chicken and the crest of a cassowary; it sported big sharp claws and, probably, feathers.

 I surely wouldn't want this turning up at the kitchen door each morning. Thank goodness I missed it by a mere 66 millions years:

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2014/03/20/500-pound-chicken-from-hell-dinosaur-once-roamed-north-america/
 

Doggie Who

If you like dogs, and you like Doctor Who, and if you have time to follow a link, and you can be bothered clicking http://metro.co.uk/2014/03/15/doctor-who-from-tom-baker-as-a-flandoodle-to-david-tennant-as-a-long-haired-chihuahua-all-12-time-lords-and-the-war-doctor-as-dogs-4571926/, you can head across and see DeviantArtist Tee-Kyrin's take on all the incarnations of our favourite Time Lord as pooches.

For example:

And:

In other news, I received a present today. I love unexpected gifts. Anyway, an Arvo Job colleague is in the process of decluttering her house and found an old book from 1963 she thought I might like: How to be Happy with a Horse by John Harrold. The illustrations by Dik are amusing - lots of pointers about the dangers of teeth, hooves and back legs are included. Chapters have titles like "Show Him He's a Status Symbol', 'Yoicks and Bally-hoo', and 'Talk Turkey to your Horse'. It's all very quaint.

 I shall browse through it tomorrow.

Thunder and Lightning, Very Very Exciting

Today I've been catching up on sleep, and slowly, so very slowly, unpacking and washing stuff after a weekend away trail riding along the always stunning Howqua River.

It was an adventuresome couple of days with fantastic horses and experienced riders. The weather was mostly grey and cloudy, but not too hot for strenuous mountain work, or too cold, although it got seriously chilly at times when we left the valleys and were exposed to the full brunt those infamous alpine winds. Best of all, it didn't rain during the days. There was, however, much drama on the Saturday night when a late storm blew in. My sister and I were happily ensconced in our respective tents and snoozing away the tiredness of the day when lightning cracked, thunder rolled, and an almighty wind blew up. The ground actually shook a few times. This was no normal storm. This was a STORM!!!!

For a while there, with my little canvas world wildly flapping around me and giant raindrops pummelling down, I was worried my tent might not be up for it (I had visions of it blowing over, and myself running around in an undignified manner in the middle of the night with my soggy belongings looking for a place to rest my weary head), but after all our trips to the mountains together, I should have had had more faith - my trusty tent stood strong and stayed dry, the storm passed quickly, and I snuggled up in my sleeping bag and swag and slept soundly til morning. Apparently, my sister and I discovered the next day, the residents of the nearby (too crowded for my tastes) bunkhouse had been thanking their lucky stars that they weren't in tents, totally unaware that we were as snug as bugs in those proverbial rugs.

All in all, we had a great time. It was just what I needed to clear out my head and re-energise my body. Horses and mountains are good for that kind of thing.

And yes, we're already lining up another ride :)

Because You Can Never Have Too Many Punks

Every now and then, scooting around the internet looking for writing markets, one bumps into a project that immediately appeals to something deep within one's psyche. Most themed anthologies are slow burners that sit in the back of my head until a eureka moment hits, or I already have a half-done story that seems to fit the bill so I get back to work on it, but occasionally one makes me sit up and want to get started on it from scratch right away. Like now! 

This submission call for original fiction for The Mammoth Book of Dieselpunk is just such a one.

As it proclaims: If you need to know what dieselpunk is, it's a subcategory of steampunk, essentially, covering the 1920s through to the 1950s, including the Roaring Twenties, the Depression, World War II, and even a little beyond that.

I like this site for its classy pictures and atmosphere. I really need to give this project a go, I think, if only for the sheer fun of it.

 I see trench coats and smart little hats, a wintry night, dark Northern climes, mountains, trains... I do love trains. Maybe an explosion or two. Or not. A Depression Era tale maybe? And both World Wars always make interesting settings for weirdness set amidst global chaos. Not sure yet, but my brain is on it.

Go brain.

And after that?  Check out all the punks here.

Elfpunk maybe?

Hmmmm.  

Happy Day

It was a good day.

I aired my tent in preparation for an upcoming Big Horse Ride, and felt happy imagining the mountain trails and just thinking about the fun to come. I got a hold request for a story, and felt happy that someone likes that particular story enough to maybe publish it. I wrote flat out for 2.5 hours, almost finished a story, and felt happy about the work I'd accomplished. I only napped once, did some reading, and generally got things done.

Yes, 'twas a good day.

Way Way Too Awwwwww To Not Share

Gigja Einarsdóttir and her family rescued a foal found wandering off on its own one night near their home just outside Reykjavik, Iceland. They sheltered the foal, which they named Brogi, for the night and eventually found the mother.

But before they did, Einarsdóttir’s 4-year-old daughter got to run around with Brogi, and it's the cutest thing ever.

Check it out here


All together now: aaaaaaawwwwwww.
 

The Lone Chicken

For any poultry aficionados who happen to drop by to check up on The Chook, well, she's baaaack.

Last reported here as missing (turns out blogs are useful for the keeping track of errant fowl), seven weeks later, on Saturday to be precise, with not a single visit in between, she turned up very early at the kitchen door for a feed. I tossed her a handful and headed off to town, thinking I probably wouldn't see her again for a few days, that she was doing one of her slow re-entries, but there she was, still pottering about when I got home late that afternoon. When I opened the kitchen door, she promptly headed on in and made herself at home. She's been hanging with the cats ever since.

I'm not sure what seven weeks is in chicken time, but she's certainly a quick adapter. And presumptuous. But such behaviour is pretty much par for the course with this particular critter.

Hair-Trigger Scribes?

Reading Jane Turner's regular column 'Turning Pages' in The Age this morning, I was pointed towards a piece from last year in Ploughshares magazine by novelist Rebecca Makkai.

Titled 14 Ways to Tick Off A Writer, the content is, I think, self-explanatory. If you're in doubt, she opens with: Writers are fun and easy to annoy. Minimum effort, maximum rage. She goes on to provide details about how to poke your favourite scribe with a stick just for the heck of it. Mind you, she's mostly referring to novelists with actual publications under their belt, so much of this was news to me.

Anyway, the one I liked most is: Turn up at a reading. Raise your hand to ask a question. Launch into a ten minute description of your novel-in-progress. But in a whiny voice, with a question mark at the end. That totally makes it a question.

This I can relate to. It gives me flashbacks of the uncomfortable sort. I love attending literary festivals, buying books, bumping into folk and chatting, hearing the wise sages of writing dispense interesting facts and advice, but am far less enamoured with the question times after.

Sure, every now and then, you get a good session, with smart people who raise interesting topics that aren't all about them. However, more times than I can count, I've curled my toes and stared hard at the floor while long-winded people try desperately to impress the writer up on the stage with their own brilliant output by going into great detail about the amazingly different novel, which is sort of like the guest speaker's, they're presently working on. Or worse, they give a not so quick rundown of the three manuscripts at home in their drawer that no publisher will take, the inference being that they'd like the guest speaker to champion their masterpieces. Or they launch into a dissertation about how they, with their particular genius, interpreted the writer's work in a way that no-one else has ever done before and they've made a fifty point list of fascinating observations that they alone have uncovered which they would now like to share...

Cue groans.

I feel sorry for some of them, I do, the ones with their neediness so nakedly on display or those determinedly struggling with awkwardness so as to seize what they believe is their big moment, but at the same time, such behaviour seems rather obviously ill-mannered to me. Festival attendees are supposed to be smart people, yet some simply cannot comprehend that the audience has paid to hear pearls from the proven writer, not listen to the ramblings of floor stealers.

I suppose it's all human nature though, the kind of boorish behaviour that celebrities draw from certain types. You get the wannabes and attention seekers at conventions of all kinds, be the speaker a star of SF, a Wall Street predator imparting advice on how to smilingly rip money from the hands of the gullible masses, or a combination of the two, namely a Kardashian.