Monday Minutiae

I got a rejection for one story.

I got a hold request for another - but I won't hold my breath. I've learnt not to get too excited too soon about those.

I'm now on the Definitive List of Published Australian Spec-Fic Prose Writers.

Sunday Poem

Once I wanted to ban the bomb
And create a world of peace and love.
Now I want to ban bogan bass
And up feral fundaments sub-woofers shove.

Double Whammy

So, way way back in January, the 14th to be precise, when this blog was still minty fresh, I posted this:

Good news that put a spring in my step today: two stories that I submitted to the same anthology have both been put on the short list. So, they might publish both. Or one. Or none, as occurred recently in a similar situation.

I must admit, I was pessimistically going with a repeat of the 'none' scenario.

However, *loud cheer* and *happy dance*, this time it went to the other extreme. On Sunday, I received an email from the editor, Stephen Studach, informing me that both of my stories will appear in the upcoming anthology 100 Lightnings.

Writing. Go figure.

Sunday Snaps and Submission Scores

Place: Airey's Inlet.

This is me and Sylvester, a big, boofy, very fast boy, and the Great Ocean Road beach that we’ve just been galloping flat out along.


Me and my sister Cindy, who is on Ginger. This was probably our last beach ride for 2010 – soon the holidaymakers and tourists will fill the beach with their towels, fishing rods, surfboards and Frisbees, and we wouldn’t be able to hoon and splash around.

Excellent people, excellent riders, excellent beach, excellent fun.

In the afternoon, 4 of us headed into the bush, and once more, much hooning on horseback was done.

And, in breaking news, as a perfect conclusion to this seriously perfect day, I came home to an email telling me that two of my stories have been accepted for the same anthology. The drought is over!!! But more about that later.

(Writing) Life Goes On (2)

Many many many moons ago, I had 3 stories published in The School Magazine, all of which were illustrated by Kim Gamble.

Today, out of the blue, I got this email, which might be of interest to others as well:

I wanted to notify you of a forthcoming ABC Radio National Hindsight program, which will be a retrospective on history of The School Magazine. As a current or former contributor to the magazine, I thought it might be of particular interest to you.

Hindsight is a one-hour weekly feature program on Australia’s National radio network, devoted exclusively to social history. If you are outside Australia, details can be found via the link below and the show will be available as a podcast.

The School Magazine has been produced every year since 1916 and has been loved by generations of Australian children. The list of staff and contributors over that time reads like a who’s who of great writers and from Australia and around the world.

The program will include recent and archival interviews with a host of people whose paths have intersected with that of the School Magazine. Actors will be reading correspondences, story extracts and letters from our readers.

So tune your radio to ABC Radio National at 2.00 pm this Sunday afternoon, sit down with a cuppa, and enjoy!

For more information, please click on the link below:

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/hindsight/stories/2010/2997272.htm

(Writing) Life Goes On

So I received a rejection yesterday. Not just any old rejection, but a personal rejection from one of the pro publications. My work was praised and analysed and favourably compared with another work (oh no, I reinvented the wheel?). Then they asked me to send more work when it becomes available.

During Worldcon, I learnt a new word – rejectomancy. As in ‘Do not practice this.’

But I can’t help it. I gaze at the entrails of the email and try to divine my future. What does it all mean? Is my work good, is it bad, is it …?

Worldcon: A Really Rapid Roundup

So many people are blogging about AussieCon4, and most of them are insiders with far better photos of the behind the scenes happenings and major events, far more intimate meetings with interesting people to tell about, and certainly a higher grade of gossip than me, so I’m just going to do a ramshackle rundown of a few everyday things that happened to me, amused me, or in some way caught my inconsequential attention. There will be much gratuitous name dropping as well.

1) The funny film montage shown at the opening ceremony. Cutting back and forth between Aussie films and SF classics, it gave us, among other things, Sarah Connor watching Mad Max blow up Kenny’s poo truck and the Terminator emerging from the flames, Storm Troopers shooting down Ned Kelly, hobbits hiding from the Wolf Creek psycho, David Gulpilil watching X-wings bomb Darwin, and Crocodile Dundee doing his call-that-a-knife shtick to Darth Vader. By popular demand, the montage was shown again at the closing ceremony.

2) The Write the Fight workshop was fun because we got to get up for a change and jump around and pretend to hit each other. Predictably, there were a few guys, some in berets, who were eager to impress Alan Baxter by expounding their knowledge of commando techniques for quickly killing people or by trying to grab his leg when he was demonstrating kicks, but he very deftly and graciously deflected their attempts at hogging the limelight.

3) I enjoyed any session or panel with Kim Stanley Robinson in it. The man is brilliant, funny, compassionate, optimistic about the future, ideological, and just plain lovely. He got top points from me for continually referring to Economics as a pseudoscience, and belittling it as the astrology of our times.

4) While standing in a long line waiting for the above mentioned Kim Stanley Robinson to sign my Blue Mars, I got to chat and joke with folk from Finland, the UK and Western Australia. We felt sorry for poor KSR, but not sorry enough to remove ourselves from the queue, and explored the possibility of just asking him to simply spit on the title pages of our books. It got a bit gross. I suppose you had to be there.

5) The later people arrived for a session, the closer to the front they wanted to sit, and then preferably right in the middle so that half a row of settled folk had to get up to let them past.

6) I recall suffering through a dark, bleak, very weird, Brazilian SF film and groaning with the rest of the audience at the end when it turned out to have no point whatsoever. It was like a parody of an art house movie, and yet it wasn’t. The comments from the audience made it worth the agony. It was a real bonding experience, but the memory of that film still makes me shudder.

7) I got a bag of lollies from Twelfth Planet Press when I bought a book. I love freebies and personal touches.

8) Coffee with Kaaron Warren. I signed up for my first kaffeeklatch as a tentative exercise in practicing my convention socializing skills and overcoming public shyness, thinking there would be no pressure to perform because I could hide amongst the other 8 participants. Shock, horror, I was the only participant. Amazingly, I remained calm. Fortunately, I didn’t babble. I wasn’t brilliant, but I didn’t babble. Happily, Laura E Goodin and a few other writerly folk and their friends and family joined us, so I got lean back and listen to how the other half lives (you know, how it is when your stuff gets published a lot and editors actually invite you to submit stuff) and I even occasionally butted in. The only fudge was when Kaaron kindly asked me if I was a writer and I went into my default, dismissive waffly mode. The highlight of the klatsch was when Kaaron suddenly jumped up because she had spotted Robert Silverberg , sprinted across the room for an autograph and a fangirl chat, then returned with stories of his niceness.

8) Peter M Ball signed my copy of Bleed. I tried to ever so casually mention that we shared the TOC of Moonlight Tuber #1, but my brain inexplicably latched onto Midnight Echo, so I babbled something about Midlight Mumble Mumble instead. Peter was a real gentleman and very gracious about it.


9) Have I mentioned the Build a Lego Dalek workshop? It was fun.






10) I got a big hug from Sue Bursztynski, and she shared the news that her book Wolfborn has been picked up by a publisher and will be out in December. Go Sue!

11) Coffee with Catherynne M. Valente, during which I did not mumble or babble, said a few relevant things, and scored a treasure.

12) Coffee with George R.R. Martin (I just can’t repeat that often enough) during which I also said a few coherent words. See, practice pays.

13) On the last day, I was much amused by a panel with Greg Benford, Alistair Reynolds and Charles Stross during which many science jokes were made about centrifugal forces, teleportation, FTL ships and stasis fields, and the audience laughed in all the right places. I love SF people!

There’s more, but that’s enough. I’ve got some more sleeping to do.

Worldcon: The Aftermath

I woke up this morning with a cranium-splitting headache, which I dubbed Revenge of the Convention Centre. I'm certainly glad that I slated an extra day off from the Arvo Job for recovery. It has taken various pharmaceutical products and two pots of strong tea to restore me to a vaguely coherent state. Today will involve much fresh air and liquids, an invigorating walk in the country sunshine, a nanna nap or two, and much ruminating upon the events of the last five days.

I’ll get back to you with an afternoon blog once I’ve sorted out my chaotic, post-convention state.

In the meantime, here's another Lego Dalek pic:

Worldcon Five: Coffee

Now the carnival is over… and I’m sooooo tired. Over the last five days, I’ve been getting about fours hours of sleep a night. Tomorrow will be a sleep in and catch up day.

Today was an excellent finale to the convention. I went to 2 Kaffeeklatches (strictly 9 participants at most, one author-host, and the hot drink of your choice). I hadn't considered attending any of these, but on the Saturday, 2 of my fellow YOSF&F workshoppers highly recommended that I try them, so I signed up for a few on the Sunday and Monday to break up the panels, workshops and films.

The first KK today was with Catherynne M. Valente, a wonderful, though visibly tired (day 5!!!) hostess, who gave me a signed galley of her upcoming book Deathless with instructions to blog a review of it once I’ve read it. Three other lucky participants also got copies and instructions. This had nothing to do with Catherynne having a clue about who any of us were. When she asked who hadn’t read any of her books (I’ve only read her short stories) we four were the ones who honestly, but shamefacedly, put up our hands, each of us thinking we had just effectively removed ourselves from consideration for the much coveted prizes. But lo and behold, fate did a squirmy twisty back flip, and we apparent losers were *punches air* in fact the winners!

The other Kaffeeklatch was with… wait for it … George R.R. Martin! What a lovely man! Given that there was a queue a mile long for his much hyped KK yesterday, that I got to meet him at all was a stroke of absurd luck. I went to sign up for Catherynne’s KK, and there was a sheet for George utterly devoid of any signatures. I thought it was a mistake, but no, he was sneaking in an extra session, which no-one seemed to know anything about, and so I put my name down as the #1 participant. He told us about his career and gave lots of good advice. I was particularly interested in what he had to say about the upcoming HBO series Game of Thrones based on his work.

I also attended 3 panels today, with names like John Scalzi, Melinda M. Snodgrass, Greg Benford and Charles Stross sharing thoughts, techniques and good advice. Then it was time for the closing ceremony, and finally, time to return to the Real World.

Over the past 5 days, I’ve met so many clever, funny, down-to-earth and generous people, but there’s simply no point going into it any further now, for I am too pooped to do any of it justice.

Worldcon Four: Priorities.

What happened to days two and three? You tell me. I’m in a bubble. I suspect, however, that it has to do with a little something Einstein mentioned in his Special Theory of SF Geekdom called Convention Time. Anyway, I’ll do a catchup later in the week.

For now, it’s enough to report that I’ve boldly set forth early each day, my rucksack packed with special survival rations: cheese sandwiches, Pink Ladies, gingerbread men and barrels of water (that convention centre literally sucks the fluid out of you). I've done much, learnt much, and met many people. No details now - must get ready for tomorrow.

I’m only posting today so I can show you that I achieved my ultimate goal. Well, one of my many ultimate WorldCon goals (and yes, I got Kim Stanley Robinson's autograph - yay!)
Some people will leave AussieCon4 with a Hugo (and congratulations to them all), but me, I’ve got this Lego Dalek that I made myself:

And proud I am of it too, as were the others at this workshop (proud of their own creations, I mean). This was FUN. And believe me, there will be mini-Daleks posted on Facebooks everywhere.

Worldcon One

A gentle start to Aussiecon4 - gotta pace myself. I attended the opening ceremony, then fun was had, panels were attended (only two today: ‘The balancing act of speculative fiction comedy’ and 'Minotaurs in space helmets: using myth in science fiction’), familiar names were attached to faces, hellos were said, and hands were shaken.

And in breaking news, a fellow YOSF&F workshopper who is also a Worldcon volunteer informed me that all is not lost on the building a Dalek out of Lego front – apparently there’s a session for adults too. Consider it locked in.

After a spin around the Dealers Room, I headed across the city for a movie: Tomorrow, When the War Began. Good, gripping stuff.

Scifi Spring

One more sleep to go :-)

End of the Month Report: August

Submissions: 2
Rejections: 8
Acceptances: 0
Published: 0
Stories presently out: 6
Mood: ♫♪ What’s it (writing) ♫♫ all about ♪♫♫ ??? ♫♪

Scifi, scifi, scifi! Oi! Oi! Oi!

When you open The Age’s A2 supplement for a leisurely Sunday morning read and discover an article about the Hugo Awards titled It’s SF, but not as we know it, and said article reels off names like Paolo Bacigalupi, China Mieville, and Catherynne M Valente while giving a Booker-like roundup of the shortlisted works, well, then you know something odd is going on.

That something odd is, of course, AussieCon4, the 68th World Science Fiction Convention in Melbourne, which starts on Thursday.

And I’m good to go. I’ve organized days off from the Arvo Job, highlighted the program (check out Robert Silverberg and other such SF luminaries, try to get Kim Stanley Robinson to sign my treasured, but now yellowing copies of Red Mars, Green Mars, and Blue Mars, learn how to make a Dalek with Lego blocks*...), cleared my camera and charged the batteries.

So yipeee! Only 4 sleeps to go!

*I later realised that the 'Build a LEGO Dalek' is in fact part of the kids program, as are 'Light saber making and training' and 'Steampunk my iPhone and iPad'. Drats, drats, drats. Bloody kids have all the fun.

A splice of life

I saw Splice last night. Dark, creepy, occasionally funny, full of slippery moral slopes, abysmal parenting, folk getting drunk on their godlike powers of scientific creation and giving in to base urges. The word love was twisted and abused, and constantly wielded as a get-out-of-jail card for inexcusable behaviour.

Given that the neighbours are indulging their love of bogan bass tonight, after lulling me into a false sense of security with months of peace and quiet, I feel a few dark impulses of my own rising. I’m tempted to pop next door and engage in a little DIY chromosomal upgrading. The introduction of sound-sensitive DNA into their genetic makeup, as well as a better taste in music, would be a definite improvement.

Monkey see, monkey buy

New Scientist. One study. Two adverts. The only difference between them is a four second scene in which the female model either looked passively at the camera or touched her cheek with the back of her hand.

The one advertisement was much preferred over the other, even though the volunteers did not notice any difference between them. Apparently the gesture produced a measurable, positive emotional response. No wonder all those ad models are endlessly caressing themselves or running their hands through their own silky tresses in outrageous displays of product porn.

Still, it’s a bit scary. 4 seconds? One gesture? Is that all it takes to manipulate rational thought?

Here we go again

So I came home to my sixth rejection for this month, and there are no morale boosting publications in my 'forthcoming' folder, so of course I'm thinking about chucking it all in and investing my sense of identity in something infinitely more doable than writing, something like winning an Olympic gold medal in some sport I have yet to take up, or saving the planet from greenhouse gasses, or building a FTL spaceship in my backyard.

But even as I'm swearing that this time I really really mean it, this time I'm really really over this heart-crushing writing business, a part of my brain is already planning my comeback and telling me that hey, that story will be snapped up for sure if you send it to publication XYZ or ABC, and you know if you just rejig that other rejected story, maybe drop a few hundred words from it, why, for sure there'll be worldwide bidding wars for it, and you know, some of those rejections were nice encouraging ones so you can't be all bad, and ...

Blah, blah, angsty blah.

Incurable.

I ♥ democracy

And so off I went this morning, a chipper citizen eager to cast her first country vote here in the Heartlands. In St Kilda, I always waited until 5 minutes to closing time, hopped on my bike, barrelled through the weary leaflet folk still left standing, and did my civic duty. But today, I wanted to check out the local election scene.

The first noticeable difference was that there was much more cake involved. There were huge slabs of the stuff on tables of all political persuasions. This feed-them-sugar strategy had me worrying about whether people voted according to the cocoa content of Judy’s or Beryl’s secret recipes rather than the worthiness of our often doughy politicians.

The second big difference was that the demographic wasn’t skewered towards trendy young arty things and professional young couples with 4WD prams intent on gentrifying the world in their image. Instead, there was a lovely mix of different age groups and social classes, with a few crusty old country codgers thrown in.

Unfortunately, as much as I ♥ democracy, I’m less enamoured with bureaucracy. Despite the fact that I’d changed my address details, and despite the fact that I had a letter confirming the change, I was not on the electoral roll. Apparently, a nice volunteer told me, they had had many such omissions (a conspiracy of some sort?). So alas, I had to fill out forms, and finally, fifteen months after leaving St Kilda, I had to cast an absentee vote for Port Melbourne.

Where's the tribalism in that?

It just won't be the same watching the results on telly.

Never surrender, never give up.

At last - my long expected fall from footy grace. Last week, three of us shared first place in the footy tipping at the Arvo Job. This week, after 6 (?) weeks in the lead, I've sunk to third place. Oh, the ignominy! Oh the penury of lost winnings! There are two rounds to go. Who knows (dare to dream) maybe I'll fight my way back to the top. Still, when it comes to fighting, it helps to know what you're doing (I know it's a sport and that it involves a lot of blokes and one ball). I guess I'll just have to leave it to luck then. As I've done every week so far.

So go ... whoever I've picked!

Love is a multi-level battlefield

Forget life as an American musical; life as a Japanese video game, that’s the ticket. When it comes to the contest of love, there’s none of that feel-good wielding of umbrellas, and singing and splashing in puddles business then. Instead it’s seriously impressive swords and heavy-duty bass guitars at ten paces, racking up points as you go.

Some things, however, never change. If you claim that a movie is a comedy, then the dialogue by definition must be humorous. And when it comes to romance, it doesn’t matter whether you’re a Boomer, a Gen X, Y or Delta, the plot is set in stone. Long ago, at some writers meeting in a post-Jurassic cave, dramatists decreed that a traditional love story must abide by the following structure: boy meets girl, boy and girl fall in love, boy and girl face obstacles and/or misunderstandings, boy and girl have a falling out, boy and girl overcome obstacles and/or misunderstandings, boy and girl get back together, true love triumphs. There’s usually some kissing involved.

Scott Pilgrim vs the World obeys the classic rules while remaining a steadfastly modern movie. Goodness knows what granny would make of it all. Since it's a rom-com, our lovers, Scott and Ramona, are naturally sweet and witty, thought definitely not virginal, and throughout their trials, a Greek chorus of sharp-eyed, wise-cracking, fast-living friends and family members pass comments to counter excessive soppiness. Many droll observations about our incredibly interconnected lives are made without belabouring the point, and the movie pokes much fun, as does all good comedy, at People-Who-Take-Themselves-Too-Seriously. There is kissing. And more.

I saw this movie yesterday, and I’m still sniggering at the Righteous Vegan jokes.