Duck!

So here it comes, Asteroid 2012 DA14 (they couldn't have come up with a snazzier name?) which will flyby just 25,000 kilometres above out heads, the closest-ever known approach by a large near-Earth asteroid. 45 meters across and whizzing past inside the ring of GPS, weather and communications paraphernalia presently in geosynchronous orbit, it'll be 8000 kilometers closer to us than any of those satellites. Not to worry though as researchers say that both the satellites and our planet are safe from impact. Wouldn't want our smartphones out of action. Now that would be a catastrophe!

Lucky Australia will be afforded one of the better views of this non-happening Armageddon. Look under the Southern Cross from 4.30am AEDT. And here you can read about everything you need to know about Asteroid 2012 DA14 (Happy Harbinger?)

The interesting thing about this record event, apart from the cosmic bullet burn suffered by Earth, has been reading about all the asteroid deflection research going on around the world. Bandied about with abandon are plans to use kinetic impactors or gravity tractors, fitting asteroids with rockets, vapourising space rocks to force them to move in a different direction, and painting asteroids white so the pressure of sunlight will force the asteroid into a safer orbit etc. I was amused to read a slightly dismissive quote by a scientist in New Scientist stating that "These are in the realms of science fiction for now" (oh, the insult) but then a few paragraphs later, there was talk of the viability of designing a nuclear missile to blow apart a dangerous asteroid or comet, and a real, upcoming test mission called Deep Impact 2 to smash a spacecraft sans nuclear explosive into a small asteroid. So did that theory go from science fiction to science fact in one rah-rah Hollywood movie? Did the coolness of Bruce Willis give it instant street cred? Just asking on behalf of those other poor, cruelly put-down theories.

Anyway, people of Oz, if you want to get up in just a few hours, look to the Southern Cross and behold the wonders and the dangers and the harsh, arbitrary nature of the universe (just ask the dinosaurs). If somewhere out in the dark beyond, the course of Asteroid 2012 DA14 (Flyby Fred?) had been bumped just a smidge by a piece of cosmic grit or a gravitational tug...

Easy and Not So Easy Days

The Lawnmower Man is here, making sure the place doesn't look like it's inhabited by a hobo, though he has an easy job of it today. With heat of an Aussie Summer hammering the place, there's not much growing going on. Weeds and plants alike are just grimly hanging on, not wasting any enery on frivolous things like growth, and awaiting the coming of rain. But that's okay. The LMM will more than make up for today's cruising session once that growing begins again and the jungle-like tendencies of my garden once more come to the fore.

Alas, this is one of those weeks when I do more Other Stuff That Isn't Writing than any real, get-stuck-into-it scriberly work. That's okay too. Sometimes you have to clear the decks so you can clear your mind.

And now I'm off to the Arvo Job. Everything is being restructured at the moment. Things have been slowly dismantled over the past few months, and over the coming months, we'll be swapping and clipping and pruning and weedbombuing duties and procedures that have been in place for years, which is anxiety inducing for many people and makes for a tense atmosphere. I wouldn't have minded more certainty this year, if only for the enery-saving component of predictability, but what can you do? It'll be okay, I'm sure, although even as I type them, I sense an air of 'famous last words' about that statement.

*obviously I couldn't type the word 'energy' this morning. Possibly saving myself the effort of including a 'g' each time was in itself a subconscious effort to save calories.

Happy Talk

I wasn't going to blog tonight, but was just reading Justine Larbalestier's excellent post about how you don't have to be a tormented soul to be a writer - and no, there's no 'but it helps' punchline to go with that - when I came across, and just had to nick, her link to this Forbes list of The Ten Happiest Jobs, because there, in the top 5 no less, we have:

4. Authors: For most authors, the pay is ridiculously low or non-existent, but the autonomy of writing down the contents of your own mind apparently leads to happiness.

So true. Money, believe it or not, and gasp, gasp, gasp, isn't everything. That said, covetous soul that I am, I would still prefer to be paid a decent amount for my scriberly work and be both happy and well paid, because:

Ya gotta have a dream, if you don't have a dream,
How you gonna to have a dream come true?

Amusingly, if you scroll down,  below the list of the Happy Ten, there is also the list of the Ten Most Hated Jobs which were generally much better paying and have higher social status. What’s striking about the list is that these relatively high level people are imprisoned in hierarchical bureaucracies. They see little point in what they are doing. The organizations they work for don’t know where they are going, and as a result, neither do these people.

So, rich, poor, got lots of stuff, haven't got much stuff, happy, not happy - things are not always as they possibly superficially seem...

So I Finally Dared Do It

Today I gave the big SF no-humans-just-aliens story I wrote over the Xmas break a final polish and a pat on the head, and then sent it off out into the big wide world. Not just to any publication, mind you, but one of the Big Three. Might as well aim insanely high.

I haven't sent anything off to pro publications for a while, but I'm gearing up for more assaults on those divine heights this year. I'm still weeping over the near misses last year - so close, so close - but moping about what might have been ain't gonna get those mountains scaled, so off we go again.

In other news, as if to counterbalance the new story going out, one of my princess stories for the bad princesses anthology has just been knocked out of the royal race (I have to admit, this particular princess's royalty credentials are pretty tenuous, and of an alien nature, so fair enough). Anyway, that's one princess down, with three (sexy-evil princess, morally-ambiguous-ending princess and rebellious, steampunk warrior-princess) still in the competition. It still amazes me that I had so many princess stories tucked away on my hard drive. And I have one that's still a WIP, although technically the protagonist is a queen, and as we all know, queens are a different kettle of fish altogether.

Print Me A Moon Base, Pronto.

Always happy to come across news that there are teams of dedicated people with wide-ranging and creative minds out there working hard to make my space dreams come true, I was fascinated to read about UK-based architects Foster and Partners being hired by the European Space Agency to design a potential lunar base on the southern pole of the Moon. Go team!

But wait, there's more.

The truly nifty thing is that instead of dragging truckloads of materials from Mother Earth to the Moon, a wasteful and expensive process that reeks of financial and political dependency on the homeworld (okay, I'll admit it, I've been mightily brainwashed influenced by KSR's Red Mars series) they're investigating a cheaper option using lunar soil, or regolith, as the building matter. Or rather, as the "printing" matter, for they plan to whip up a concoction that they can pop into their moon bound 3D printer and, hopefully, out will come the components they need to create a "catenary" dome that can house four people and shield them against radiation and meteorites.

So maybe it'll soon be a matter of simply printing up a spaceship to get there too. Possibly the future will look like something along the lines of "Have Space Suit and a Printer Under One Arm - Will Travel".

 Anyway, science. Love it!

Three Philosophical Phrases Of Life

I feel the universe is sending momentous messages my way this week, although as is usual with such randomly acquired input collected by my obsessively pattern-searching brain, I have yet to decipher the full depth of this cosmic communication in a way that satisfactorily suits my own agenda. Anyway, whilst reading articles about different topics in various publications over the past few days, I've come across this scattering of philosophical clues to the Meaning of Life.

There's plan de vida, a Costa Rican term to describe a lifelong sense of purpose. It doesn't have to be big and world-changing, it just has to be there.

And ikigai, a Japanese term used in Okinawa, meaning "the reason for which you wake up in the morning".  If you've got this covered, apparently it adds to your happiness index and life expectancy.

Finally, wu wei, the Taoist principle of non-action, is about not forcing a solution or seeking to gain control but being aware and going with the natural flow of things. It sounds like a few stories I've written.

So what does it all mean? Does it mean even anything? Is the universe targeting me as a special snowflake, or am I just another grubby mortal scrambling about in the mud to make sense of the chaos around me? Who knows? Who cares? I shall ponder this as, taking a deep breath, relaxing and going with the flow, I head off to the Arvo Job. I'm deferring my usual midweek collapse day until tomorrow. It'll be interesting to see how that goes. I haven't worked three days in a row in the city since May last year. Crossing fingers.

To Pop Up To Sydney Or Not To Pop Up To Sydney?

'Tis the question on my mind for the past five minutes since I opened a certain email from a certain organisation.

And why this particular Shakespearean quandry? Because the NSW Writers' Centre is having a one day Speculative Fiction Festival on March 16, and you don't get too many of those in these parts. Many topics of spec-fic relevance will be discussed. Great names abound:

Presenters include: Juliet Marillier, Ian Irvine, Marienne de Pierres, Alison Croggon, Richard Harland, Melina Marchetta, Lisa Hannett, Garth Nix, John Flanagan, Cat Sparks, Kim Wilkins, Sophie Masson, Russell Farr, Dionne Lister, Pamela Freeman, Belinda Murrell, Ben Chandler, Kate Forsyth,  Robert Hood, Jason Nahrung, Kirstyn McDermott, Angela Slatter and Dirk Strasser. 

Details are here

So I know where Sydney is, approximately (northwards and to the right), but the truly big question is, would I be able to find Rozelle?

End of the Month Report: January 2013

Submissions: 7
Rejections: 3
Acceptances: 0
Published: 0
Stories out in the wild: 14
New stories completed: 1 (but it's pretty rough)
Mood: Not sure really. I'm too busy getting stuff done to worry about how the cards are falling. I was disappointed about one of the rejections - it was held until the final call and then didn't get in, and I really wanted that sale because the story has been out and about quite a few times and it was a cool publication that showed an interest in it - but otherwise, well, onwards and upwards. But then there was that matter of that Prime antho TOC sending me into the happiness stratosphere, which decidedly tips January into a big win month, so, all in all I'll go with a couple of great big :-) :-) s.

Virginia Chook

The Occasional Chook turned up rather late today at around 16.30. I was having an indoor nap, but immediately went out to say hallo. We had a joyous reunion, as I haven't seen her since last Wednesday.

These days, since she abandoned us after eighteen months of house sharing to sign up with the chickens two doors up (I'm still not bitter about it, honestly), we normally catch up with each other 3-4 times a week, usually Wednesdays and Sundays and then randomly whenever. I know she swings by most days - there's plenty of evidence of the poopy kind on the patio that I have to sweep up and wash away - but our busy schedules often clash. I have the Arvo Job and other commitments, she has whatever onerous duties she must perform as part of her new flock. Often, I hear demanding clucks outside the kitchen and barely have time to toss a handful of sunflower seeds out the window before I have to run for the train, and sometimes we can miss each other for long stretches of time and I wonder whether she'll keep popping by. So far, despite the uncertainty of treats and opportunities to run around the kitchen, she still turns up.

Initially, after she'd finally decided to move out, whenever she came back she was obviously agitated and most eager to be away again ASAP once she scrounged her favourite treats and had a quick dirt bath. I was almost going to rechristen her the Ungrateful Chook. I suspect she was worried she might lose her spot in her new flock if she went AWOL for too long. Chicken flocks are notoriously tough on newcomers, and demand much submissiveness and compliance from accepted members. A lot like humans, eh? Oh, all right, I'll back off - a lot like some humans. However, as time passed, and she obviously settled into her new digs and felt more confident about her place in the chook hierarchy there, she became visibly more relaxed about sneaking off to spend time here, and started to hang around for longer and longer. Now food is savoured, cats are followed about, the garden is patrolled and checked, and many many dirt baths are taken *sigh*. Last Wednesday, as I napped in the backyard on the Xmas Swing, she even settled down close by for a companionable snooze. It was very cute.

Personally, as a chicken of great individuality, I think she needs our place the way Virginia Woolf regarded a room of one's own as an absolute necessity for the stretching of one's creative spirit in the pursuit of writing. I myself regard my beloved Writing Room as the place where I most feel like my true self. But, quickly, back to the Occasional Chook before I ramble on about me. Here, away from the conformity of the flock, the Occasional Chook can indulge in her fondness for felines, checking out human abodes, running around on tops of houses and being bossy. She can basically strut about, let down her feathers and just be her own wild thing for a while before her need for the companionship of her own kind overwhelms her again and she heads back to once more submit to the totalitarianism of the flock. She needs them to be happy, can't live without them in fact, but she obviously really needs her own space away from the flock too.



Well, that's my rather read-the-obvious-writerly-subtext theory about the Occasional Chook's behaviour :)

The Nazis Win

Remember the Nazis Who Cheered Me Up post I wrote back in May last year? Probably not. Anyway, I do, because that was the day I got the bad news that things were seriously out of whack with my health, but a trip to the cinema afterwards to see the Finnish-German-Australian comic sci-fi movie Iron Sky helped lift my spirits. I've always been grateful for the many chuckles Iron Sky gave me then. Sometimes art helps us to see further and to understand more. Sometimes it simply makes us feel better on a bad day, and there's nothing wrong with that at all.


The reason I bring this up now? Simple. The movie has just won the AACTA Award for Best Visual Effects. Go team, and congratulations.

Now, I must hobble off to the Arvo Job (still sore from horse riding)

Pale Horses Pushing Envelopes

And lo, because you can never push a theme too far, I did ride not just one, but two pale horses yesterday, and behold, today I do feel like Death warmed over, but verily in a good way.

On the short morning ride with just my sister and myself, I rode my old friend M, who was feeling particularly full of oats and up for anything. All went well. The wildlife in the Wombat Forest was abundant, with butterflies everywhere, rabbits popping out and scampering off underfoot at inopportune moments, and little flocks of colourful parrots constantly erupting from bushes to startle the horses, all of which made for a fun, keep-your-wits-about-you time.

Then came the afternoon ride with my sister, myself on a very zippy buckskin I hadn't ridden before, and an experienced guide we knew well so we could gallop and wend amongst the trees without getting lost. This ride was longer and harder and faster, as always, and the one that I fully knew would push me from the fun zone into the when-will-this-agony-be-over place because I hadn't done an all-dayer since April 2012, before my medical woes began.

And so it did pass. The swift pace had me huffing and puffing, sweat was pouring from under my helmet and running down my face, and muscles everywhere soon began to play up. My calves right from the start hurt like heck, and got worse as the ride progressed, clenching into tight knots of excruciation. For the last hour and a half, my ankles turned to jelly. Every time we finished a fast bit of riding, I quickly slipped my feet from the stirrups to stretch my lower legs and rotate my ankles to ease the pain, luxuriating in the relief. All in all, I did not make for a pretty picture towards the end as more and more muscles gave out, so I rode at the rear to spare the others the sight of my legs swishing all over the place and my less than impressive seat. This unsteadiness was almost the undoing of me when a kangaroo bounded onto the trail and spooked the horses, but I did not fall off! And when I finally slipped from my horse and hit the ground again, my sympathy for beginners knew no bounds as I was reminded of how agonising it feels to be a riderly neophyte.

But I did it! Sookiness was not an option. I clenched my teeth and got through it, mostly because I knew I needed to get myself back into shape for a weekend of mountain riding my sister and I and one other plan to do in about two months. So today, with that goal still firmly in my mind, I must graciously pay the riding piper his dues and suffer soreness, stiffness, and screaming ankles that have me hobbling around the house in a most undignified manner until they warm up. All of this was expected, which was why a long weekend was chosen for the pushing of this particular envelope. And it was good to find out that I had energy enough to get through such a day and make it home again (I was carefully measuring my reserves as we went) though I did collapse into bed quite early last night, and slept in to a positively decadent hour this morning. But I did it!

Usually, on the train on the way home, given that I'm wearing joddies, schlepping gear and, no doubt, have more than a whiff of the barnyard about me, I get into many conversations with fellow horse lovers. Yesterday, as a nice addendum, I met two horse-and-book mad young girls. We talked about rides, ponies and what they were reading, and they showed me their My Horse games on their smartphones and bragged about their points. Lucky kids - I would have absolutely adored something like that at their age.

Behold How I Knew He'd Pick The Pale Horse

It's the Australia Day long weekend, so there's plenty to do out and about the countryside. Today we went nice and early to the 38th Fryerstown Antique Fair and rummaged around amongst goodies of both the genuinely collectible and the horrifically rubbishy sort, though, of course, one person's trash is...

Mostly at these affairs, it's just fun to wander around and look at all the lost stuff that used to have a place in other people's lives, stuff that used to belong somewhere before it was cast out into the cruel world to drift about for years in search of another safe haven. It's all a bit sad, really. One is practically assaulted by stories. And then there's the weird experience of suddenly coming across some overly cute nic-nac from your childhood but completely out of context on a stall table, and it's just a thing, not the amazing, almost living object you remember it being. Without the personal relationship, statues of donkeys pulling carts and dolls in glitzy dresses are just inanimate junk.

After that, we caught an afternoon session of Django Unchained. It's like watching Hamlet in that you know for sure there's going to be an awful bloodbath at the end. Anyway, enough has been written about this movie. The only new thing I can offer - and be warned this is a very mild and very silly spoiler - might not be a genuine observation at all, but the product of a horse-skewed mind desperately self-referencing. It comes from my being something of a palomino aficionado (just ask my sister). I notice all the horses in movies, but I especially sigh with joy when a particularly fine palomino trots across the screen.

 Anyway, after a certain scene put me firmly in a Blazing Saddles frame of mind, when we got to a later scene where there was a choice of horses for Django to take so he could ride back to reap his ultimate revenge, I anticipated for a good couple of minutes that he would take the palomino, because a golden horse is what Cleavon Little's sherriff very dapperly rides in Blazing Saddles. However, as said, this may be an entirely fanciful connection wrought by personal experiences in the palomino-obsessed hinterlands of my mind. But that wasn't my only reason for my betting on the palomino. Parallel processing an otherwise simple act, a pale horse, not a white horse, is also what Death, the Fourth Horseman of the Apocalypse rides. The fact that Django then rides the palomino without a bridle or saddle also has mythical resonance. Besides, any Western fan knows that the nameless stranger (again, Mr Death in disguise) usually rides into town on a pale horse. If he's called Bart or Bruce, he usually rides a dark horse. So lo, when Django did indeed take the palomino, I felt quite smug. Ah, the things that go through one's head at the movies.

And on that horsey note, I must go get some sleep soon. All the beautiful horse riding scenes in Django Unchained made me glad that I'm off on an all day ride tomorrow. Perhaps I'll even score my favourite pale horse for the morning ride. Crossing fingers.

I Would So Go To A Convention In Frontierland

Around the traps, assorted speculative fiction folk are starting to make plans for heading off to Conflux 9 - the 52nd National Science Fiction Convention, but would they, I wonder, be so keen to hit the road if it were being held in Aryan City rather than Canberra? Would you want to set foot in a town called Aryan City? On the other hand, I'd be quite excited about loading up the car and driving to Frontierland.

What has brought this on this apparent nonsense? Well, yesterday, on the way home, I read a version of this article, about the suggestions sent 100 years ago to the Federal Department for Home Affairs in the lead-up to Canberra's naming in the olden days of 1913.

So how about actually living in a place with over-the-Aussie-top and mighty cringe-worthy names like Kangaemu or Eucalypta or Boomerang City? Or ever so twee Harmony or Paradise?

Then there are the truly original but what-were-they-drinking-when-they-pulled-these-out-of-a-hat-and-stuck-them-together suggestions like Wheatwoolgold and, my favourite, Sydmeladperbriso (try saying that quickly), though I want to know why the heck Sydney gets to be the first part of that name! Unfair, Sydney-centric favouritism as per usual right from the very start!

I really must track down the entire list. I can see from the cut out featured in the article that there's even an Atlantis. How would that have gone down at international meetings, I wonder, no pun intended - the Hon. Representative for Atlantis, Australia. Would our politicians have had to wear special robes covered in symbols and mysterious looking space-wizard hats? If you come from Atlantis, you're almost obliged to be theatrical.

However, I do find the suggestion Australia extremely boring. Australia, the capital of Australia? What a waste of breath. Who was the drongo who came up with that one, I wonder.

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.

Have Moon, Will Travel

Over at The Book View Cafe, Steven Popkes has written an interesting and inspiring piece about private enterprise and space travel, using Heinlein's book The Man Who Sold The Moon as his launching pad.

On getting to the Moon, he writes:

I'm tired of one shots to places. Exploration is fine and I love it. Science is fine and I love it. But we need a space traveling culture. A space based industry. And we're not going to get that as long as long as we have to crawl out of the earth gravity well every time we turn around. Until that happy day we carve a hole in Vesta and use it to move around, the next best place to work is the Moon.

As per usual when I read such stuff, I wonder if I'll get to see us as a species heading in the right direction (upwards) before I shuffle off this very earthly plane.

I'd Like To Thank My Cats, My Chook, My Computer.

I'd like to send very big, individual thank yous to everyone who, by one means of communication or another, sent lovely congratses about my getting into Aliens:Recent Encounters. They're much appreciated. I feel like a rock/pop/movie star :) Well, almost.

And a HUGE thank you to Steve Cameron for posting about my good fortune on his blog.

I have to say that personally it's been an inspiring thing. I've been typing away for many hours this weekend - confidence tends to oil the writing machinery - and I almost feel brave enough to send my shiny new SF story off to one of the Big Three. Well, maybe after another edit or two.

Still, one must always bear in mind that like any of the arts, writing is an wilful and unpredictable business. Who knows when the next sale will occur, if at all, and whether one will be able to keep up with the market's zeitgeist, or even defy it and turn the world in a new direction! One that it didn't even know it wanted to go in before! Or not :) Underscoring the uncertainty of an artistic life, we went to see the movie Hitchcock yesterday, and I couldn't help but be amazed that a such an iconic director with so many hits under his belt still had such a hard time raising funds for a movie just because he wanted to do something different. Where is the trust, people? Conformity, alas, is the default setting of most money-people, be they filmmakers, gallery owners or publishers. That Psycho eventually became a classic is neither here nor there - it only hit the big screen because Hitch believed in it so much he financed it himself. Self publishing anyone?

And by the by, I read this morning that Sense and Sensibility was published at the author's own expense, so the late, great Jane Austen actually forked out all of her savings to get her first book published. I didn't know that. Or I'd forgotten. Anyway, it was only after sales of S&S went well (read by royalty etc) that a publisher finally, after many years (from 1797 until 1811 as far as I can ascertain from the article) of the manuscript sitting in the bottom drawer of an elegant escritoire, purchased the copyright to Pride and Prejudice for a scandalously small amount and, thanks entirely to her own belief in her own work, Jane Austen was well on her way to literary immortality.

So, the more things change...

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!

Blog, Ho!

I've been "busy" easing into a new schedule that sets aside regular blocks of time for writing to whip my story producing output back into shape, and more hours of exercising my poor battered body to get it back into close-to-Olympic-athlete shape :), as well as getting to and through the Arvo Job (reduced hours help) and getting out and about for films and social stuff because those areas of life are important too, all without pushing myself into any fatigue zones that might hinder recovery. Stress is a no no too, so rushing about is verboten, as is siphoning off designated sleeping hours to do other things.

It's early days yet, but it seems to be going well (I just have to accept I can't fit in quite as many writing hours as I'd like, so I'm making the ones I scrounge really count!) except for the blogging component. But I'm on it. Once I work out how to slip the odd online natterfest back into my routine, she'll be apples.

Best Intentions Scuppered

My plans to set the tone for a productive 2013 by getting the first draft of a new SF story finished by the end of this week might have been foiled by an uncooperative train system. All this week, they've been doing track work. I no sooner get into my story than we're all bundled off the train, herded into a cramped, crowded bus (not good for writing) and driven the rest of the way. This also adds enough time to my commuting to make the work day feel unbelievably loooooong (*yawn* one more day to go).

Still, it's a goal I'd like to accomplish. And the story really wants to be written. Therefore, I shall try to scrape enough time together on the weekend to get the job done so that both I and the story are happy.

That Was That

Back to the Real World tomorrow, so I'd better start getting my head in the Arvo Job zone again. And think about getting to bed. Still, I'm wonderfully rested and it's been a good two weeks off. The first week involved a lot of socialising and some writing, and the second week involved less socialising and lot more writing. The upshot of this is that I have a shiny, new, spacey, potentially Hugo-winning ( hey, let's throw in a Ditmar too) SF story that I'm very pleased with weighing in at 8714 words (editing should bring it down to something more sellable)  and a lightweight fantasy with two demons and a gargoyle that'll sneak into the 3-4k category once it's polished. I almost finished a third (the ending is proving troublesome), and also tinkered with a few, half-done oldies, so all in all, not a bad effort.

And tomorrow, probably on the train, I'll start on a new story for an antho (not due for months yet) that I wasn't going to chase unless I got the beginning, middle and end of a story before attempting it, which happened today while I was washing the floors. I immediately downed tools and excitedly hurried into my office to jot down notes, then reluctantly returned to my way overdue chores. As much as I view cleaning as a necessary time-waster, strangely enough, I do often come up with ideas whilst wielding the paraphernalia of scrubbing. It's affirmation of the bored brain desperately seeking stimulation theory, I think. So yeah, this week's mission is to finish the first draft of a post-Singularity tale that as yet only exists in my head. Here's hoping that the nuts and bolts of it smoothly flow from my brain into my computer.

Ah holidays - so good for the soul.