Because it's Time to Buy that Annual T-Shirt with a Geeky Message Which I'll Probably Only Wear Whilst Writing.

Plus, this is a family thing. We do it each year.

So, to bed, to bed ASAP, for I'm off to Supanova early in the morning.

I'd better pop the tickets in my bag. Wouldn't want to be halfway to Melbourne and realise I'd forgotten them.

See you there, maybe. There's usually an awful lot of people.  

Because Horse Pictures. And Wishing Everyone a Happy New Year is Always Good.

The clock has ticked over, and since Friday has now arrived, I'll do a quick Gong Xi Fa Cai post, mostly because then I get to include some cool pony pics. Everything from wild to classic to cute.




So without further ado, let's welcome the Year of the Wood Horse a.k.a The Year of the Green Horse. As I've mentioned before, January has been a bit of a non-starter for me, so I'll use the lunar calendar as an opportunity to reboot and restart my year. I hope it goes well for me, just as I unrealistically hope it goes well for everyone in the whole wide world. Gong Xi Fa Cai !

And for a bit of colour, this is one verdict on babies born this year:

The 2014 Horse year baby will likely be an energetic, warm, friendly, intelligent person. He/she will be always happy and talented; he likes to be within the limelight. His positive outlook in life can make him out-standing among all of people. The horse baby will put the fantastic enthusiasm into their work. They will not give up easily, but on the other hand, 2014 horse baby may also become an impatient person who enjoys independence and freedom and perhaps their interests are usually superficial, sometimes, they will be fairly hot-tempered and unreceptive to suggestions from other people.

Horse baby - I love it. That almost makes this a Foalwatch post too...

End of the Month Report: December 2013

Submissions:3
Rejections: 3
Acceptances: 1 (Sassanid Sands)
Published: 0
Stories out in the wild: 11
New stories completed: 0
Mood: I've got that usual end-of-the-old-year, I'm-definitely-going-to-pull-up-my-footy/writing-socks-and-kick-many-goals-in-the-new-year-no-matter-what-the-Fates-throw-at-me conviction, and am hoping I'll make good on it.

Now, time to brace myself for 2014.  Happy New Year everyone.

Been Busy

Hallo, blog. Sorry about the break. There was a birthday to cater for and celebrate (mine, he-he) and a neglected house to clean so my weekend guests weren't too overwhelmed by dust bunnies, and emails with pictures of overly cute cats and kittens wearing conical party hats to read, and ponderous buses to catch to the Arvo Job instead of speedy trains both last week and this week (this yearly fortnight of track maintenance is another reason why I usually take my Annual July Winter Writing Break around now, but alas, I've already had lots and lots of time off from the Arvo Job, and I'm still not sure if I'll need more this year), and a new, dark, bird-based story that suddenly appeared whole in my head to write for an upcoming deadline, and since I can't write on buses, it had to be beaten into shape here at home (done, and pretty close to dusted after I cannibalised parts of a flashback from an old story that I rather liked but never used), so something had to give.

Anyway, I've got a post about dialogue on the boil, inspired by a couple of tiresome gents who sat behind me on Tuesday's bus ride to the Arvo Job. I was going to finish it today, but Wednesday R&R (some of it spent on finishing up that bird-based story) got in the way. I'll try to finish it ASAP.

Walking the Local Arty Walk

 

So I didn't get to Sydney for various reasons and it turned out to be for the best, maybe (it looks like they had fun though), but since the Castlemaine State Festival in full swing, there were plenty of other things to investigate in the region this weekend. Yesterday, after seeing the pharmaceutical thriller Side Effects, in an entirely appropriate homage to Steven Soderbergh's intent to give up movie making to concentrate on his painting and other interests, we stopped off at Maldon to spend a few hours shopping and doing the Maldon Art Walk. We looked at paintings, sketches and sculptures in shop windows, popped in and out of open studios, and even, in an amazing piece of good timing, caught up with a friend who is displaying her work in the cutest alleyway converted stable ever, as you do if you possibly can (Maldon Mews Studio and Gallery).


Today, there was my invite to a poetry and photograph opening to fulfill, free, fun theatre (picture, left) and lots of food in the park, and wandering around, there were so many open studios it would seem that every fifth residence in town is inhabited by talented artsy folk of all types.

There's a lot going on, and I must try and get to a few of the shows over the next week ten days.  Being a huge fan of Italo Calvino's Baron in the Trees, I'm especially intrigued by the arboreal twilight theatre performance The Republic of Trees. How will they pull it off, I wonder. Well, there's only one way to find out.

Whale of a Week

Some weeks are dull affairs, just a matter of ploughing onwards through Real World crap and waiting for things to improve. Other weeks are so full of writerly good stuff that you want to frame them and hang them on the wall so they can cheer you up when you're having one of the aforementioned weeks.

Anyway, close on the heels of the stunning TOC bulletin of a few days ago comes the news (thank you, Steve, for pointing it out) that the 2012 Bram Stoker Awards Preliminary Ballot has been posted here by the Horror Writers Association, and if you scroll down to the anthology section, you'll see a certain book that includes a certain short story of mine.

I'll say no more for now, except "Go, you good book, go!". Let's wait patiently for the Final Ballot to be announced on February 23.

Still, it's pretty exciting.

Alien Encounters of the Thrilling Kind

I'll admit it - I've been popping over to Prime Books about twice a day ever since my story Nullipara was accepted for one of their upcoming anthologies just to see if they'd announced the TOC for Aliens: Recent Encounters yet. I was, naturally enough, curious about the company I would be keeping. Tonight I came home to an email from Thoraiya Dyer kindly pointing me towards editor Alex Dally MacFarlane's announcement of said TOC and cover reveal.

OMG. WOW. Unbelievable! Just feast your eyes upon the following very cool cover :

 And the TOC, just look at it!!!!:

An Owomoyela - Frozen Voice
Ken Liu - The Bookmaking Habits of Select Species
Catherynne M. Valente - Golubash, or Wine-Blood-War-Elegy
Zen Cho - The Four Generations of Chang E
Vandana Singh - The Tetrahedon
Paul McAuley - The Man
Ursula K. Le Guin - Seasons of the Ansarac
Molly Gloss - Lambing Season
Desirina Boskovich - Celadon
Genevieve Valentine - Carthago Delenda Est
Caitlín R. Kiernan - I Am the Abyss and I Am the Light
Jamie Barras - The Beekeeper
Robert Reed - Noumenon
Elizabeth Bear - The Death of Terrestial Radio
Sofia Samatar - Honey Bear
Karin Lowachee - The Forgotten Ones
Jeremiah Tolbert - The Godfall's Chemsong
Alastair Reynolds - For the Ages
Brooke Bolander - Sun Dogs
Nisi Shawl - Honorary Earthling
Samantha Henderson - Shallot
Sonya Taaffe - The Boy Who Learned How to Shudder
Eleanor Arnason - Knacksack Poems
Gitte Christensen - Nullipara
Indrapramit Das - muo-ka's Child
Jeffrey Ford - The Dismantled Invention of Fate
Karin Tidbeck - Jagannath
Pervin Saket - Test of Fire
Nancy Kress - My Mother, Dancing
Greg van Eekhout - Native Aliens
Lavie Tidhar - Covenant
Yoon Ha Lee - A Vector Alphabet of Interstellar Travel

Now I have to go sit down and fan myself. I mean, I'm going to be in an anthology with Ursula K. Le Guin! And all those other fantastic and prominent and clever writers I've read and admired for years. This is heady stuff for me. Looking at this list, I'm wondering how the heck I snuck in. Not that Nullipara isn't a good story, mind you... :)

OMG. WOW. Unbelievable!

A Prime Piece of Pre-Christmas News

A couple of weeks ago, I was sitting around trying to come up with an idea that I could turn into a zombie story for an upcoming antho, because, well, it would be so cool to get into a Prime Books anthology, when in comes an email...

It was another one of those situations where I was pretty much expecting a rejection, so it took a few seconds to absorb the fact that this email was actually one of those happiness inducing 'yay' responses rather that one of the more common 'nays'. I'd sent off, as per the guidelines, the maximum of three alien encounter stories, and wouldn't you know it, the one I wasn't sure about, the one I almost second-guessed myself out of sending, made it!

So yes, here comes the news I've been dying to share - my science fiction story Nullipara, which was first published in 2010 in The Tangled Bank: Love, Wonder, and Evolution edited by Chris Lynch, will appear in the reprint anthology Aliens: Recent Encounters edited by Alex Dally MacFarlane. It's scheduled for publication in June 2013.

The final lineup will be announced later this week, I've been told, or the following week, but I've been given permission to make my own private announcement now.

Inclusion in a Prime Books anthology is certainly a fantastic early Xmas present, and knowing I'll soon have an SF story in a book with the word 'alien' in the title is as geekily festive as it gets.

Who's That Girl ?

Doing a quick Sunday spin about the Internet this morning, I popped across to Clarkesworld and saw that the December 2012 issue is out.

I perused the cover and TOC.

The Wisdom of Ants by Thoraiya Dyer, I read, and paused.

Hmm, I thought, there's something awfully familiar about that appellation. Thoraiya Dyer, Thoraiya Dyer - I was pretty sure I'd heard that name somewhere before, but try as I might, I couldn't specifically link it with anyone. It's been bugging me ever since.

And nup, I still can't place it. Thoraiya Dyer, Thoraiya Dyer... Not to worry though, I'm sure it'll come to me eventually.

Anyway, and alas, even though it's Sunday, I won't be getting much writing done today. I spent all of yesterday on driving across the state to celebrate two birthdays and then making my way home again, so I'll have to dedicate most of today to seriously resting up for the work week ahead interspersed with bouts of catching up on must-do household tasks. That's okay. Sitting about reading isn't exactly suffering, and it's nice to do so in a clean house. Besides, yesterday was a great day, full of delicious food, fun company and lots of laughs, well worth the trade off.

When I finally got home last night, I finished off with the first episode of the ten-part Swedish science fiction series Real Humans, which looks to be a good and accessible show about the myriad of possible relationships and interactions that might be introduced into our everyday lives if we ever do mass produce simulacrums to function as our workers/slaves/friends/carers/whatever your frail human neediness or twisted mind can come up with.

Being Swedish, the writers were not at all coy about the fact that the availability of androids for easy sex would definitely drive a huge part of such an industry, or about mentioning the kind of problems you'd be inviting by having gorgeous, compliant bots and randy teenagers under the same roof. This was not done with lurid scenes either, but through mature adults acknowledging reality in their conversations. I enjoyed their upfront way of dealing with a fundamental human drive and the unlikelihood of the young being able to resist such overwhelming temptations rather that enduring gratuitous scenes, righteous ranting, or cloying, puritanical hints of naughtiness going on in the shadowy back blocks of Happy Family Land.

With multiple, interweaving storylines taking place in a parallel present, just one episode in, the series has already set itself up to explore the hatred of androids (called hubots) by displaced workers, hubots making better and truer friends and lovers than emotionally messy humans, hubot carers acting more like jail wardens than servants, humans becoming utterly dependant on their hubot companions, and many other scenarios, as well as tackling tricky ethical questions about android rights and what to think of humans who treat these strange, new lifeforms like toasters. I appreciate that we humans don't come across as uniformly evil and uncaring, and that our frustrations and suspicions in the face of such a massive social upheaval are treated with understanding. To make the dilemma even knottier, many of the too-cute hubots are exceptionally creepy, occasionally ever so subtly patronising, and a couple of hubots are also showing some seriously bad ass tendencies and signs that they're anything but as pure as the driven Scandinavian snow. However, I suspect that  pickled red herrings are being cast about with abandon. All this, and it was entertaining too.

Of course, a US version is already in the works. I wonder how they'll deal with the sex issues.

I'm looking forward to seeing how this series unfolds.

Aaaaah, I Sooooo Needed That

After a long day at the Arvo Job:

Good news, good news, good news, of the best kind, of the publishing kind, of the anthology kind, of the confidence boosting kind. Grinning, grinning, grinning. Unfortunately, I'm not sure whether or not I can share this news yet - after all, one must make an effort to exercise a modicum of professional decorum in these cases - but believe me, the moment I get the go ahead, I am soooooo posting it.

Good news, good news, good news....

Yay, Team Spec Fic!

I'm always pleased when great examples of the speculative fiction genre are mentioned in mainstream press and treated with the respect they deserve, and was especially happy tonight to read on the train on way home a serious economic piece in the serious political commentary section of The Age about rampant consumerism and wealth distribution that referred to Ursula Le Guin and how she "once wrote a remarkable short story on an imaginary society called Omelas". The article then goes on to explain the setting and ethical dilemma at the heart of the famous 1973 philosophical parable that all science fiction and fantasy readers know so well.

I remember how The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas blew the moral circuits of my mind the first time I read it. It so succinctly tells us that we each and every one of us are responsible citizens who have to make a decision about what kind of a society we want to live in, and that at some point, there's no fudging that choice - you have to face the truth about what kind of a person you are. It still gets me with that last sucker-punch of a line :

"The place they go towards is a place even less imaginable to most of us than the city of happiness. I cannot describe it at all. It is possible it does not exist. But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas."

I suppose the day that line, and indeed the whole story, stops getting to one is the day one's mind has stopped questioning injustices because it's easier and more comfortable and convenient to do so, and one's heart has hardened to the point where ingrained selfishness prompts one to habitually turn a blind eye to the sufferings of the poor and the powerless. The day this story no longer has an impact is the day when we, as individuals and as a society, have decided to stay in Omelas, a sad sad day indeed.

Congrats, Clunes

During my Sunday morning leisurely read a few hours ago, I came across a piece about Clunes Booktown, which since April has actually been an accredited international booktown, one of only 15 such towns in the world. Ever since I moved from St Kilda, a suburb of Melbourne, and had to give up my easy access to all the festivals that go hand in hand with living in a capital city much enamoured with artistic exhibitions, the closeness of Clunes, and the many other regional Victorian festivals that are springing up all around me, have gone a long way towards fulfilling my cultural needs. Yes, I know Melbourne is just a train trip away, but after a week of commuting, the thought of popping down for a film festival tends to make me groan. And besides, my focus has shifted to the place where I now live, as it should.

Anyway, what caught my eye about this piece was how the three organisers emphasised their determination to maintain the Clunes event as a "festival of books" as opposed to a writer's festival. That made me smile. I could almost read into the line - and I'd like to point out that this is an entirely subjective interpretation of their remark - a gritty resolve to not let the purity of the Clunes event  "degenerate" into a writer's festival, which would inevitably be about egos, personalities jostling for the biggest marquee spaces and the grubby art of promoting products. You have to admit, they have a point. Impoverished writers desperately scrabbling for attention so they can make a living doing what they love can tend towards dominating proceedings.

 As it is, Clunes is about the finished work, the book that leaves its author's brain and goes on out into the world to take on a life of its own. No matter how much writers might loudly claim otherwise, the popular perception is that once it's published, a book becomes the property of all its readers. It goes through a myriad of reinterpretations as it filters though the minds and experiences of countless individuals, some of whom, if the writer is very very lucky, think the book was actually written just for them. That said, those same readers can become quite upset if the writer, who has no clue about their own creation obviously, dares to contradict readers' cherished preconceptions about the book.

Clunes Booktown is more about the cult of collecting rather than the cult of celebrity, hence the joy of stashing countless shopping bags on the backseat of the car before you set off in an optimistic anticipation of a gigantic book haul. Who cares about the bleeding writers? It's all about finding that out-of-print book you've been searching for for years. It's about finding old magazines and obscure texts that make you quiver with excitement. It's about coming home with a stack of treasured tomes higher than yourself and the joyous anticipation of leafing through all those many many pages.

So back off, writers! Clunes Booktown is not all about you.

Another One!

Some of you may be getting a little tired of this, but me, never!

Eric J. Guignard sent an addendum to yesterday's email noting another nice review, hot off the press, of Dark Tales of Lost Civilizations. It's from Michael R Collings, a Senior Publications Editor for JournalStone Publishing, an Emeritus professor of English, popular author of best-selling horror novels and GOH at the last World Horror Convention. You can read it HERE.

And yes, he mentions me - why else would I be so excited and divert from my morning routine to immediately post this?

The twenty-five stories, all by fine writers with a careful eye toward craft and artistry, range from the quietly atmospheric to the overtly horrific…ribcages erupting from the living bodies of men. Some incorporate traditional horrors, such as ghosts and Lovecraftian behemoths; others introduce entirely new levels of creatures and creations. In Caw Miller’s “The Small, Black God,” a stone statue becomes the instrument of vengeance and death. In Rob Rosen’s “Buried Treasure,” the treasure found in the northern desert wastes is both that which is sought and something more. Gitte Christensen’s “Whale of a Time” evokes another time and place while simultaneously playing with multiple levels of a manipulated reality. Andrew S. Williams’ “The Talisman of Hatra” subsumes overt horror beneath a challenging story of love and betrayal. Jonathan Vos Post’s “Sumeria to the Stars” transforms the starkness of mathematics into possibilities almost—but not quite—beyond imagining; in its closing lines, it provides a counterpoise to Bruce L. Priddy’s re-creation of ancient epic in “Gilgamesh and the Mountain.”

Anyway, as said, I'll never get tired of this. It still amazes me that a story one has worked on for ages mostly in isolation, all the while wondering whether anyone else will want to spend a portion of their precious time with your creation, is actually being read by real live people out there in the great big world, and that some of them are actually really enjoying it! Talk about a warm fuzzy feeling deep in the cockles of my writerly heart. And (she said smugly) I do think WOT is doing rather well for a story that was rejected 11 times before Eric enthusiastically snapped it up. Lesson learnt: you either click with editors and readers when you do these riskier pieces, or you don't. Must remember this.

Now, must return to my trusty writing keyboard (with a smile on my face). I'll be back to blog later. Maybe.

Just Call Me the Comic Relief

 

Thanks to another of Eric J Guignard's fantastic updating emails, I've been alerted to four more reviews for Dark Tales of Lost Civilizations, all of which praise the diversity of the stories and comment on how they appeal to our sense of adventure and wonder. Check them out. They're right about the anthology being a good read.


One review is over at Onetitle Magazine: http://onetitle.ca/dark-tales-of-lost-civilizations

Another is over at Literary Mayhem:

http://literarymayhem.com/wordpress/2012/09/19/book-review-dark-tales-of-lost-civilizations-edited-by-eric-j-guignard/#.UFmma66tV0w

And then - drumroll, please - there are the two reviews that mention ME! They don't say a lot, but they DO mention me.

The first is in a Black Gate review (Black Gate! Whoo-hoo!) HERE where, amidst all the praise for other contributors, they sneak in:
 

Nor is it just the lost civilizations themselves that are varied. Rather, it is the changing mood and tone that keeps this anthology so fresh. The reader assumes there will be horror (since it is mentioned in the subtitle) and will not be disappointed by Chelsea Armstrong’s “The Nightmare Orchestra”. The reader also suspects there will be something spooky, and Joe R. Lansdale provides a deliciously creepy yarn in “The Tall Grass”.

But most readers will not expect a laugh-out-loud futuristic comedy like Gitte Christenson’s “Whale of a Time”.


Then, over at Nameless Magazine, there's this very cool line:

Geeks will get a kick out of "Whale of a Time" from Australian science fiction writer Gitte Christensen, where virtual reality is no longer virtual and user groups run amuck.

So, more things to make me smile this week. Nice.

Time to Pull Up My Sleeves

There are many things that one lets slide when one is busy having an extended existential crisis. They seem small, petty, unimportant, insignificant, grubby even when compared with with the greater questions surrounding mortality.

These little things are, however, the warp and weft of everyday life, and once one's excuse for loitering on the edges of normalcy and napping all the time vanishes, one is left with a lot of cleaning up to do.

So, it's time to catch up with myself. But need I say that I'm happy to do so? I think not.

Off to the Arvo Job then.

Snoopy Happy Dancing my Way Back to Good Health

As you can guess from the title of this post, my Date with Destiny went well. After months of various doctors gently grooming me to prepare myself for the worst (yes, I knew what they were up to. I'm a writer. I study dialogue!) you can colour me surprised, amazed, a little shocked, but most of all, a bright shade of extremely grateful.

The day didn't start out well though. When I got to the hospital for my Date with Destiny scan, I was told that the MRI was broken, which meant there'd be no up to date information for the afternoon consult, which meant I would have had to head home again full of unknowing, which is dire stuff to feed my imagination, and wait goodness knows how long to find out about my situation. Luckily, the MRI tech guys arrived on the scene and managed to fix the machine in the nick of time. Thank you tech guys. I'd buy you each a beer if I could. Heck, throw in vodka chasers all round as well. And peanuts. And chips. The expensive ones.

After that unwelcome drama, I met up with my sister for tea and cake, and off we went to the specialist consultation.  Last time I was there, I was warned that the best case scenario after my initial three months of post-op therapy was a lot of upcoming pain and botheration for myself, friends and family. I'd been advised by my palliative nurse to not go to this meeting alone, so my sister was there to pick me up and get me home if the news was too bad and I was reduced to a puddle on the floor. However, when we walked into the consult, we were faced with a grinning surgeon and a smiling medical student. The surgeon announced that she was very pleased with the scan. My sister and I looked at each other in bafflement. We were primed for bad stuff, so it took a moment to sink in. Then our questions of the 'what do you mean by pleased' type started.

 Apparently, I've beaten the odds. Apparently, I've responded so well to the initial treatment that I'm well on my way back to good health. Thanks to the wonders of modern medicine (although my sister and I have a theory that last week's horse riding helped too), bad things have disappeared. Other bad things have reduced significantly in size. It happens sometimes, said the surgeon. I'm not out of the woods yet, but I'm pretty much standing on the treeline and looking out at the world and feeling very much like a part of it again for the first time in over ten months. I'll continue with my present therapy and checkups for another 3-6 months, but my team of medicos are quite confident I'll be as right as rain soon.

You cannot believe the relief I'm feeling. I can hardly believe it myself. I hadn't realised just how wound up I was. This is so amazing!!!! If I never win tattslotto, that's okay. I'm more than happy for the universe to siphon all my lottery luck into my continued good health.

So now I can breathe again. I can be calm. I can plan. I can purge all those twisty dark thoughts and free up my brain to WRITE again! Watch out anthologies of the world, here I come. Gitte is back in the game! Or at least she will be very soon.

From Spacecraft to Starship

I have to admit, I nicked that great title about Voyager 1 from this Washington Post article. It was just too cool and evocative to not nick.

But as a great fan of the workhorse technology of the Early Space Age that just keeps going and going and going, I was always going to do a quick post to celebrate that on this day,  35 years ago, way way back in 1977, Voyager 1 was launched. In a sequence that often confuses peoples, and mucks up careless sources, it's sister probe Voyager 2 blasted off first, a month earlier in August 1977, but because Voyager 1 was launched along a shorter and faster trajectory, it all sorted itself out in the great beyond and Voyager 1 actually reached Jupiter and Saturn first. Timing is everything.

After an impressive reconnaissance of Jupiter, Saturn and its moon Titan, Voyager 1 whizzed on ever outwards, passing Pioneers 10 and 11 to become the most distant man-made object from Earth. Voyager 2 is trailing its sister probe, and against all odds, both Voyagers continue to happily chug along, enjoying the stellar sights, and gathering and dutifully sending information back to their distant creators with their archaic, but still functioning, instruments:

Each only has 68 kilobytes of computer memory. To put that in perspective, the smallest iPod — an 8-gigabyte iPod Nano — is 100,000 times more powerful. Each also has an eight-track tape recorder. Today’s spacecraft use digital memory.

Primitive they may be by today's standards, but like the admirable Martian rovers that just kept on giving and giving, the two Voyagers have exceeded all expectations by keeping it together and steadily approaching the end of our solar system. Scientists predict that any time now, Voyager 1 will break through the hot turbulence at the edge of our solar system's heliosphere and sail on into the (perhaps) relatively cool calmness of interstellar space beyond.

So, yes, Voyager 1 will become a starship. What a promotion!

Ah, they built 'em tough in the old days. There's a lot to be said for screwdrivers and simplicity. I like my space technology to be rugged and robust and repairable. That way, when we finally do head on outwards, we'll be able to jump start engines, weld together emergency parts from scrap metal, and fix malfunctioning computers with a swift kick rather than having to find the nearest spaceship outlet selling slick, disposable, slot-in units with a limited warranty. 
 

Salvation from Outer Space

So I was having a really bad Real Life Really Sucks kind of day when my brother called with the very important news hot off NASA's multiple media press that the Mars Rover Curiosity had made a perfect landing on the Red Planet.

And lo my mind did lift from my dreary office confines and petty problems and soar upwards through the ceiling and outwards to the worlds and stars beyond, and my soul expanded with joy, and I gave a little cheer. I must admit I was very worried about that whole skycrane procedure. Like everyone else, I'd watched that 7 Minutes of Terror video that's been doing the rounds. It all just looked so complicated. So risky. So full of possible catastrophes and silly mistakes. And the Rover was so big. So car-sized. So swingingly unpredictable. One bump in the wrong direction and...

Fortunately, the scientists at NASA are far braver than I, not to mention a lot lot smarter. Ah, to be high-fiving amongst learned comrades after having achieved such an inspiring success. Here's to the folks at NASA and their newest space explorer. Long may they provide us with material for our daydreams.

Vamp Victory

I now have the go-ahead to announce that The Snowy River Feral, my Henry Lawson-style, vampire droving yarn set in the late 1920s will appear in the Return of the Dead Men (and Women) Walking horror anthology to be published by Bards and Sages Publishing. It's not just about vampires, but all manner of undead creatures. BSP's goal is to release the book October 1st.

I'm really pleased that this particular lovechild of mine has found such a good home. First sent out 1/12-2010, it took 18 months of patiently submitting this very Aussie story over and over whilst whispering 'I believe in you, I believe in you', to sell it. Not so long compared with some stories, but eons compared with others.

So yay, much news of both a vampire story and a werewolf story will soon be coming to this blog. It's so cool :)

HB to Me

So I've been busy. Not busy according to my usual every-micro-second-must-be-packed-with-useful-activities definition of busy, but a substantial-lowering-of-the-bar, post-operative busy as in 'more than one extra thing to do above and beyond the daily routine of eating, napping, going for a walk, napping, doing medical stuff, reading and an hour or two of writing'. I had guests over the weekend, which entailed getting a head start last week with squeezing in additional tasks and initiating a precise plan to feed them. Fortunately, I was provided with back-up support, it was all very low key, and no-one was that fussy anyway.

But it was all worth it because I received presents! I got a lemon tree in a gigantic terracotta pot to add to my collection around the Xmas swing oasis-nook, money for spending on nice things (done yesterday), plus my sister delivered a lovely, hand painted candle lamp from J ( a.k.a. the apple and blueberry crumble making lady), and my littlest brother's boss, whom I don't even know, sent me a huge feel-good hamper full of chocolates, magazines, other assorted goodies, bedsocks and booze, while another of his acquaintances gave me some feng shui articles to promote healing (two very different approaches to getting better, and I appreciate the kindness of both), all of which I can add to the presents given to me earlier for my post-surgery, therapeutic convenience, namely the blu-ray and wide screen TV which have kept me well entertained these past five weeks. A good haul :-)

So yes, I'm a year (plus one day too, now) older, and thank goodness for that. Any person who is ungrateful and ungracious enough to whinge about having to add another 12 months to their age CV is a person with no sense of perspective.

Anyway, it's a beautiful dark and  rainy day, perfect for guilt-free cocooning and recharging my batteries. I plan to polish and sub a hopefully funny story to a spec-fic humour anthology, and, as per usual, keep an excited eye on my emails for possible sales.