Wednesday, June 30, 2004

TOO CUTE!

2 and a half year old Erin has learnt the joys of singing songs. Over and over and over again. The current favourite is "Old MacDonald Had a Farm", or in Erinese, "Old Madonna Ella Farm". And any animal, or indeed anything she can recognise, is fair game. Even so, I almost crashed the car yesterday when we caught her singing to herself as we drove around:

Old Madonna Ella Farm
Ee-eye-ee-eye uh oh
And ella farm....?
Mummy!

I'd love to have found out what noise Mummy was making, but we were laughing too hard...

Sunday, June 27, 2004

OOOOOOH, NIIICE

Got the galley proofs of my story Silk for the upcoming Wheatland Press anthology All-Star Zeppelin Adventure Stories the other day. It's nice to see your work in print: there's a solidity to it, and a sense of permanence, that you just don't get from seeing it in manuscript form. The anthology is due to be released in late Octoberin the States. If you're in Australia you may be best off ordering it through the Wheatland Press website.

ORB #6 IS HERE

And it contains my story Tales of Nireym. Go buy! You'll find it here.

LYN'S BIRTHDAY BASH

We had a great time at Fasta Pasta on Saturday. More than 20 people turned up to help us celebrate Lyn's 35th, and the last of us finally shuffled out over 4 and a half hours after we arrived, just in time to let the staff clean up our mess before the dinner crowds rocked up. Thanks to everybody who came and made it such a fun and fabulous occasion. Luscious was touched to feel so popular, and left a very happy girl indeed.

SHREK 2

Saw Shrek 2 with Luscious and the kids this morning. A notable event: it was Erin's first trip to the cinema, and she coped with it admirably, sitting still and quiet and getting right into the whole experience. Pity the movie was such a disappointment: some nice moments, but nowhere near the sequel I was hoping for. The kids all seemed to love it, though. Spiderman 2 next...

WASTELAND

The programme for this very groovy Chesh-organised convention is now up here. Keep the weekend of 9/10 October open, this one's gonna be fun!

Thursday, June 10, 2004

BIRTHDAY INVITATION

It's Luscious' 35th birthday on the 24th of this month, so on Saturday 26th I'll be taking her and the kids to lunch at Fasta Pasta on Walter Road in Morley. We'll be there from 12, so if you fancy coming along and saying hi, come on down!

Sunday, June 06, 2004

HAPPY HAIRY FAT MAN DANCING

Luscious has started writing again :)

10 BOOKS

Nigel Read has an interesting article in the latest issue of the Visions ezine. He asks 10 writers what 10 books comprise their must-keep-close bookshelf. Desert Island Books, if you will. So I thought, for the purposes of cat vacuuming, that I'd list mine.

1. The Collins Concise English Dictionary
2. Roget's Thesaurus
3. Deadly Doses- A Writer's Guide to Poisons (Stevens & Klarner)
4. Fiction Writer's Workshop (Novakovich)
5. The Wordsworth Book of Euphemism (Neaman & Silver)
6. The Codeword Dictionary (Adkins)
7. Armed And Dangerous- A Writer's Guide To Weapons (Newton)
8. On Writing (King)
9. Aliens and Alien Societies (Bova, ed.)
10. The Wordsworth Medical Companion (Pescar and Nelson)

Mind you, like any writer, that's a carefully chosen selection. You wouldn't want me to list all 800+ books in our collection, would you?

TITLES

Something fun I spied on Chaosmanor's site. Pick 5 titles and explain how you came by them. So:

1. Father Muerte & The Theft/The Rain/The Flesh/The Joy of Warfare: A simple case of pinching something you like. I read a collection of Chesterton's Father Brown stories, all of which have titles beginning "Father Brown and..." and decided I was going to emulate that for this idea I had about a priest who wasn't really a priest...

2. Ecdysis: One of those examples whereby the title comes from the research. Ecdysis is the scientific name for the shedding of skin. As the shedding of skin is the central core of the story, and I needed the antagonist to have a realistic 'foreign-ishy' name, it fitted together nicely.

3. Moment: A simple title, but one designed to have multiple resonances. I wanted something to reinforce the protagonist's knowledge that the actions he was taking were brief and ethereal, yet all that were left of importance to him.

4. Tales of Nireym: A story of a single father hunting for an only child who ran away after an argument. Read 'Nireym' backwards.

5. Through Soft Air: The walls of reality are melting, and our hero is haunted by those who can move through. I needed an image that reflected both the way these walls were being breached, and the sense of unreality that surrounded the aging, war poet hero.

A BIT OF A WORD COUNT

As of this posting, I'm this far into my current projects:

Nouvelle Hollande: (Alternative History novel)- 2 and a half chapters
Expedition: (SF story)- 1030 words
Father Muerte & The Flesh: (Fantasy story)- 2510 words
Father Muerte & The Joy of Warfare: (Fantasy story)- 220 words
Father Renoir's Hands: (horror story)- Final draft.

A DATE IN THE DIRECTION OF UP

Just a general career update, coz it's been a while.

30 stories sold: 23 published.
4 reprints sold: 3 published.
4 poems sold: 3 published.
17 reviews published.
23 stories published.
3 non-fiction articles and interviews published.
7 stories, 1 reprint, and 1 poem upcoming.
11 stories and 1 reprint under consideration.

Not bad, all things considered.