End of the Month Report: November

Submissions: 2 (all time low)
Rejections: 0
Acceptances:0
Published: 0
Stories presently out: 5
Mood: Gotta finish my vamp story, gotta finish my vamp story

R.I.P. Leslie Nielsen

While others will wax lyrical about the Naked Gun series, for me, Leslie Nielsen was first and foremost the dashing space ship commander in Forbidden Planet. He was, I thought, everything a dashing space ship commander should be - handsome, brave, and able to shepherd a screaming woman through a collapsing mad scientist's lair.

I saw this movie at the drive-in when I was a wee, scifi loving sprog, and it scared the crap out of me.

But oh, how I longed for my very own Robby the Robot - sort of the olden days version of getting your own Arnie-Terminator to perform feats of abject subservience (and possibly payback on mortal enemies a.k.a school bullies). Ah, the power!

Thanks for the memories, Leslie.

Catnip, cleaning and cottage cheese containers

Cooper was crazy for the catnip today.

Otherwise, t’was a day of catchup cleaning, consummate creativity, council workers putting up Christmas decorations, and citizens complaining about the election.

One alphabetic aberration was the little lizard that the cats caught and carried into the kitchen to cavort with, and I carefully carried outside again in a cottage cheese container.

I also read a piece this morning in The Age about Stephen Fry’s latest chronicle in which the reviewer churlishly claimed Mr Fry used too many words starting with “C”.

Floods, freebies and farewells

After a mad / bad week in the Real World, I wasn’t sure whether I was going to make it to the final session of the Year of SF & Fantasy with Paul Collins workshop, but I woke up early this morning determined to finish off what I started so many months ago.

First, though, I had to brave the weather. Across the road, where not so long ago one looked down from the 1-2 meter high embankment at a dry creek bed, there is now a raging river. This morning it looked like this:

As with all good quests, I did get some help from a passing stranger – a nice lady from Maryborough gave me a lift to the station in her white car.

I’m glad I got to Melbourne, wet as it was, because it turned out to be an excellent day. The critiquing went well (I was chuffed by the kind words said about my MS) and Trudi Canavan* was a brilliant guest speaker and downright lovely person who not only shared her knowledge of the writing industry, but also took the time to talk individually with each of us. To our great joy, she brought a bag full of freebie books for us, and then signed them. I nabbed:


Once we completed the afternoon session of critiquing, it was time to party. There was bubbly and cheese platters and savoury snacks and a killer cheesecake, accompanied by lots of laughing and talking. Plans for keeping in contact and setting up a writing group for next year were made, and finally it was time to hug and kiss cheeks and say farewell for 2010 to a group of people who started out as strangers, but came to share their visions and dreams with each other.

After taking care of business in the city, I headed for home, writing away on my vampire story (will I make the deadline?) while torrential rain slammed into the train. It was quite cosy. Then I practically paddled home from the station to find SES tape set up on the flooded pavement outside my house:

As I took this photo, a SES car sped past, siren sounding, on its way to another emergency. It’s still raining heavily, and the “creek” across the road is even higher than it was this morning, and its current is unbelievably strong.

This most writerly day then ended well with an email from a specfic magazine notifying me that one of my stories has graduated to the next round.

*Trudi illustrated my story 'Voyage to Abydos' way back in Aurealis #24, before she became a mega bestselling author. I wish I'd had the guts to get her to sign one of the issues I have stashed away.

So true

"A writer never has a vacation. For a writer life consists of either writing or thinking about writing."
Eugene Ionesco

Don't blame me

If I don't get my YOSF&F workshop critiquing done on time, well, it's NOT my fault:

Sweet Sunday

It was a day of driving (lovely weather, gorgeous scenery), of eating pancakes, ice cream, strawberries, birthday cake, and lots of lollies and licorice whilst chatting and laughing, then driving home again.

Xmas is coming

I'm not an overly Christmassy person, but if I had an obscene amount of cash at my disposal, I would definitely nip across to the US of A to catch 'A Klingon Christmas Carol'.

Scrooge has no honor, nor any courage. Can three ghosts help him to become the true warrior he ought to be in time to save Tiny Tim from a horrible fate?

Performed in the Original Klingon with English Supertitles, and narrative analysis from The Vulcan Institute of Cultural Anthropology.
The Dickens classic tale of ghosts and redemption adapted to reflect the Warrior Code of Honor and then translated into tlhIngan Hol (That's the Klingon Language).

To me, this falls in under:

Eccentricity has always abounded when and where strength of character has abounded; and the amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigor, and moral courage it contained. That so few now dare to be eccentric marks the chief danger of the time. John Stuart Mill

I believe that as long as there is a Klingon theatre production showing somewhere in the world, there is still hope for humankind.

♪♫ So, have yourself ♫♫ a Klingon ♪♪♫♪ Christmas... ♫♪♫

Busy, busy, busy

This morning, I finally sent off my YOSF&F MS for our final workshop next week - shame on me for waiting so long - and I'm reading MSs on the train on the way home in the evenings and preparing comments. I can't believe it'll all be over soon. I also cannot believe that Trudi Canavan will be our guest speaker for the last session.

I'm also madly writing a short story to submit to the upcoming Aussie vampire anthology by the end of the month. After weeks of mucking around with different ideas that led to nowhere once I started working on them (vampires are not my strong suit) lightning struck yesterday as I was walking through the park on my way to the Arvo Job, and I finally hit upon a concept that excites me complete with a few scenes. The final scene came to me walking back through the same park on my way home tonight. I'm loving that park. Fortunately, it's a 1-2k kind of story (I hope) and I churned out 500 words on the train trip this morning, so it seems doable.

Self-sufficient

‘Tis Monday morning, and the sun is shining warmly upon the tomato seedlings that I planted yesterday. Inspired by the veggie gardens in my new hood, over the weekend, apart from weeding and writing, I started to grow my own private food supply. So far, I have cherry tomatoes, yellow pear tomatoes and jalapenos on the go. A limited diet, granted, but if zombies/aliens/uncontrollable weather hit and civilization crashes into chaos, those cherry tomatoes will be worth gold.

Of course, the apocalypse may be more prosaic than that. I have a horrible feeling that all my work just might equate to putting out snacks for the impending locust plague that everyone is predicting will hit soon.

Not Sci-Fi

I was sooo looking forward to this week’s Thursday night movie, as I do any upcoming SF film, but I’ve now filed it in the ‘time-I’ll-never-get-back’ folder of life. This is the kind of movie that some people will use as ammunition when they bag SF.

Whilst watching this awfulness, most of my thoughts fell into these categories:

1-A plot would have been good.
2-Internal logic would have been good.
3-There’s a reason these movies usually have a scientist or a journo or soldier as the main protagonist. A few brain cells and/or the ability to decide on a course of action makes the journey much more bearable for the audience.
4-Where are my Independance Day / War of the Worlds (original version) / Matrix DVDs? I need to watch them again to sluice all these ripped-off scenes from my head.
5-Bring back Ripley, pleeeeease! Female characters don’t all have to be Amazons, but they certainly shouldn’t ALL be unreasonable, hysterical, sooky wife and/or slut stereotypes constantly spouting ‘I-told-you-so’ and throwing tantrums when the blokes don’t take care of an alien invasion, like right now!

The ending is brain bogglingly stupid, but we did enjoy tearing apart on the way home afterwards. Maybe that makes it a 'so-bad-it's-good' film. Basically, as far as I'm concerned, the trailer was better.

For maximum viewing pleasure, you should approach this movie not as a science fiction film, but as a screamer flick, with psycho aliens instead of a chainsaw wielding nutter mindlessly cutting a swathe through a flock of annoying, clueless adolescent caricatures. That way, you’ll probably enjoy it more than I did.

All good

In case anyone was wondering how the doof-doof saga ended, well, it has done just that - ended. I'm savouring the quiet right now (Tuesday was traditionally a night of loud revelry), and I'm once more getting enough sleep to be functional at the Arvo Job and get some writing done. It was a tad tense there for a few months battle-of-willswise, and I did have to pull my bitch boots out of storage, but all is well now, thank goodness.

Feeling crappy?

Here's a spot of reading for those days when you feel a bit cynical about the writing industry, and weary of the whole writing-as-a-lifestyle thing:

Getting Published is Not a Crap Shoot
Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware

Many of the writers who contact me with Writer Beware-type questions seem to be convinced that the process of getting published is equivalent to a crap shoot. There are enormous numbers of people trying to sell a book, and very few publishing slots to go around. What slots there are go mostly to insiders and celebrities, rather than new writers. Agents and editors are so [pick one] busy/arrogant/sadistic that they're as likely to toss your query as to read it. All in all, you’ve got a better chance of getting struck by lightning than you do of getting published.

Read the rest: http://www.sfwa.org/2010/11/getting-published-is-not-a-crap-shoot/#more-10004

Now, pick yourself up, dust yourself off...

Rural reading

The local library had a Monster Book Sale today - the chance to scoop up hardback editions nicely covered in plastic for the price of only $1.00 each - so guess where I’ve been this arvo?

However, since I’m still reading the booty I gleaned at their last sale, I put myself on a 5 book limit this time, and actually stuck to the restriction. So I got The Year’s Best Science Fiction edited by Gardner Dozois (the 20th annual collection from 2003), and added to my Tales of the Otori series by Lian Hearn with The Harsh Cry of the Heron and Heaven’s Net is Wide, neither of which, alas, I can read until I have secured Brilliance of the Moon.

But the very first book I pounced upon was Naomi Novik's Victory of Eagles, so now my post-trail-riding-plus-three-long-days-at-the-Arvo-Job brain (which also decided that this week's movie should be RED rather than Gainsbourg because it wasn't up to accessing long ago French lessons or negotiating subtitles, but a bit of Bruce Willis blowing up things was just the ticket) is telling me to sit in the backyard in the beautiful Spring weather (outside reading is a joy I’ve rediscovered since moving to the country) and just go adventuring with Temeraire and Captain Will Laurence. I’m trying to negotiate the doing of a few chores before this Napoleonic bliss-out, and I think I will win because one of them is the baking of dill and onion bread that will go extremely well with dragonish daredevilry and cups of tea, but we’ll see.

I’m not even going to broach the subject of getting my last YOSF&F workshop submission sent off today. If I do, I think my brain will throw a tantrum.

Tough as

My day: sleeping in, washing and drying and airing clothes, towels, riding gear and camping stuff, downloading photos, chatting and emailing about the trip, drinking pots and pots of hot tea, and lovely long afternoon nap under a warm doona.

Given that people down here in the everyday lowlands are still talking about Saturday’s weather, and given the amount of flooding my sister and I saw on the drive home, it’s no wonder that some folk took it for granted that the ride had been cancelled. But no, tough trail riding folk laugh in the face of torrential downpours and alpine squalls that leave non-horsey folk shivering in their non-riding boots.

On the first, and worst (weather-wise) day of the ride, not one person opted out of the ride. As we, or rather the horses, climbed mountains made of rocks and mud, and then slid down the other side, as we hunched against winds and sleet and cold, as we felt rain slip inside our drizabones and our boots filled up with water, not one person whined or did a prima donna turn.

Instead, everyone joked about the situation and made the best of it. Tales were told of other rigorous rides, songs were sung (Slip sliding away...), and when the weather turned really bad, everyone just hunkered down and rode through it. Then, when we reached the King Valley camp at the end of the first day, soaked and shivering as they were, everyone took the waterlogged saddles (so heavy!!) from their mounts and made sure their horses were okay before dashing to change clothes and warm their outsides with fire and their insides with food.

The kind of people with you make or break a ride like that, and fortunately on this trip we had the company of even tempered folk for whom horse riding is a way of life. And that’s what it all comes down to – the riding experience. Either you love it, or you don’t, and if you do, you take whatever it throws at you, the good and the bad.

After Saturday’s extreme riding (apropos which we came up with a business idea for a new sport that involves horses, rolling down mountainsides, and giant, rain-shunting bubbles, which we will, of course, base in New Zealand) the weather improved, and the occasional showers were a trifle compared with what we had already been through. Bonded by adversity, we set forth once more and over the next two days forded swollen rivers (no-one fell off, though a few horses submerged their riders before regaining their footing), picked our way down steep, narrow, muddy trails, had saddle and bridle malfunctions in the most awkward places, and were much amused by the requisite person-hanging-onto-a-low-hanging-branch-while-their-horse-walks-on-without-them episode.

Trail riding isn’t everyone’s idea of a fun time, but I love it (that’s me, in a photo taken by my sister).

End of the Month Report: October

Submissions: 5
Rejections: 4
Acceptances: 1 (Blame Games (SF))
Published: 0
Stories presently out: 5

Mood: Too tired from trail riding to register a mood.

Cold Riders in the Rain

Just back from a three day ride through the Snowy Mountains.

It started thus, with clouds descending upon us.








Then it started raining. And it kept on raining, and raining, and raining. Our days ended thus, with the mass drying of drizabones, and the wringing out of everything else we were wearing:



Believe me, there was a reason the authorities put out a severe weather warning for this weekend.

But much fun with tough horsey folk was also had. More about that once I've unpacked my bag full of sodden, and increasingly smelly, clothes.