The Battersblog

JUST WHO THE HELL DO I THINK I AM?

2012-01-08T15:42:00.000+08:00

For reasons that largely escape me, but which may have contributed to my becoming sadly addicted to home reno shows of the "Better Homes & Gardens" variety a few years back, Luscious Lyn and I have recently started to watch Who do You Think You Are, an English show in which celebrities of the second stripe pretend to discover facts about their family history without acknowledging the team of researchers working behind the scenes who have carefully prepared every square inch of the utterly 'spontaneous' revelations well beforehand.

In truth, watching the likes of John Hurt and Jeremy Irons bemoaning the fact that they might have someone slightly notorious or ill-fitting in their backgrounds is really quite entertaining, because let's be honest, the reason I'd want to engage in such an exercise is in the hope of finding someone thoroughly and despicably nasty ("Really? My Great great great whatever buggered Blackbeard on a Caribbean beach whilst knifing the local Governor's virgin daughter, and they gave him a baronetcy for it? Coooolll....."), or at the very least, finding out that the pathetic, grubby little domestic betrayals of your more recent ancestors aren't the most noteworthy occurrences in your entire family tree: if you're going to be a hero, be a real hero, but if you're going to have bastardry in your family, please God let it be some spectacular bastardry!

Last night, we watched Jodie Kidd discover just that level of bastardry, which was entertaining for us, but absolutely fascinating for Erin, who sat up and watched the episode with us, and who was beset with questions about her own family history as a result. Suddenly, the idea that you can be connected to people from several hundred years ago, and that you can learn all about them, is inspiring to little Miss Death-obsessed 10 year old.

I know very little about my Mum's family. She died in 2003 without ever spending any time discussing her family line, and to be honest, I wasn't that interested for most of her life. My grandmother died when I was young, my grandfather was both distant and dotty when he followed us out to Australia a few years after we arrived, and due to the timing of various moves I've not really had any sort of relationship with my grandparents on either side. I know a few snippets of family history, a surname or two, and the fact that the trail stops cold sometime in the late Victorian-era with an out-of-wedlock birth. Hey, if the BBC run out of sixth-rate personalities sometime in the next 40 years and come knocking, maybe I can find something out.

My Dad's side is a slightly different matter. Thanks to a second cousin with a genealogy bug, my Dad's been able to trace our paternal line back to the early 1700s, to Henry, a pipemaker who hanged himself "in a fit of insanity after a night drinking at a local club". I've also got rather a lovely document tracing the history of the surname Battersby itself, with a trail that stretches back well before the 13th Century. Should I ever decide to do some serious digging, there could be a long line to uncover. We have a coat of arms, awarded in 1605. We have a motto ("Before honour is humility", and before you make any jokes about my personality, consider it in respect to my finances, and see how accurate it is...). The name is associated with a family seat that was first recorded before the Norman Conquest. There's a sweet looking little village in North Yorkshire that shares the name, and which is, undoubtedly, the source of its English origin. There's going to be a few things worth finding out.

The Battersby Family crest. A saltire paly of twelve ermine and gules, a crescent in chief sable. Whatever the hell that means.

I have an odd relationship with family, and with our history. The last 20 or 30 years haven't exactly been covered in glory and gold dust, as far as I'm concerned, but then, of course, I've been living it, and I doubt anyone really thinks they're part of the glory years whilst they're actually happening. Maybe William the Conqueror, but was he really happy? (Laughing his fucking head off, I should imagine...) Maybe this whole novelist thing will really take off, and my great great whatevers will be on telly looking at photos of me and commenting about the number of chins I'm sporting. Or my brother will finally tip over the edge and assassinate an entire coastal town. Who knows? We wait with bated breath.

But deep history, history that illuminates a way of life and a prevailing culture that is alien to one's own, that does fascinate me. To connect myself to moments of great import, or even just to see a connection to facets of existence which have fallen into extinction, to draw a line between myself and those events that have shaped the course of continents, that would be worth discovering, I think.

I've made a promise to Lyn-- who, for a number of reasons, cannot trace her family back beyond two generations-- that once we have the means to do so, we will find out how far back her line stretches, and who it encompasses. While we're at it, we may see how far back we can stretch the Battersbys and the McMahons.

Here's hoping for some world-class bastardry......

My paternal line, such as it is. Apparently, Oil of Ulay is good for removing lines...

WIDESPREAD MOC-AGE

2012-01-08T14:12:00.002+08:00

Ever since I've started building Lego again, I've been looking for a way to display my MOCs in an easily-collated and viewable way, but nothing has really hit the nail on the head.

Now, however, thanks to boredom and the run of the computer, I've found MOCpages, which gives me easy uploads, a WYSIWYG editor, and general levels of technological simplicity even a buffoon like me can deal with. Added to which, easily accessible galleries that show me just how unsophisticated my little creations are when compared to some of the insane designs going around.

Still, we all have to start somewhere.

So here's my page. Leave a comment if you like: all ego-rubs gratefully accepted.

A LITTLE BIT OF GUESTING

2012-01-08T14:02:00.001+08:00

I've been invited to detail my Angry Robot journey so far over at Ripping Ozzie Reads, and the results have been posted.

I leave out the bit about cocaine-fuelled orgies with supermodels on corporate jets because they're still to come, but I'm fully expecting that to be part of the next post......

WORD

2012-01-08T13:58:00.001+08:00

It's been a couple of weeks since it's been announced, but word up to Perth writer Martin Livings, who has revealed the superb artwork for his upcoming collection Living With The Dead.

The cover itself is here, whilst you can also see the full wraparound in this post. Martin's an underrated writer, and this is a collection that's going to be worth the pocket money.

I, OF COURSE, AM A GROWN UP

2012-01-01T17:45:00.002+08:00

The kids might get to sit around at parties playing Lego, but some of us are grown ups and have grown up duties to attend to.

Which is why I made these before everyone arrived:

Asteroid Scout

Ambulance Transport

Canyon Racer

Steamship Explorer

SO CLOSE AND YET......

2012-01-01T17:33:00.001+08:00

Erin, discussing what goals she wants to set for 2012:

"I want to do an extra Caligula activity."

This could prove interesting.....

GOOD FOR THE CHILDREN

2012-01-01T17:22:00.002+08:00

Like you, we in the Batthome care about the state of our house. That's why, whenever we have visitors coming over, the last hour before they get here is usually spent in a mad rush doing all the cleaning up we should have been doing all week.

Oh yeah, like we're the only ones who do that!

When our sister-in-law Amanda and our niece and nephew came over for lunch the other day, we launched into action. Blake was home for Christmas, and Aiden's mates Jake and Jarryd were over, so they all pitched in to help.

My first port of call was the reading room, and the enormous pile of Lego that had been sitting on a sheet in the middle of the floor for the previous 4 days.

"Leave that," Lyn instructed me. "There are kids coming over. They'll want to play with it."

Fair enough. And in that spirit, I'd like to present the outcomes of our 10 and 7 year old kids playing Lego with Amanda's 10 and 8 year old kids on the day.

Clockwise, from bottom left, that'd be a spaceship by Connor (7), gunship by Jake (18), helicopter by Jarryd (18) and hovertank by Blake (17).

Kids, eh? :)

LET THE FOCUS BEGIN

2012-01-01T17:11:00.000+08:00

Ah, so, first day of the year. A time for looking forward. A time for making plans.

A time for breaking out, after a year spent in a holding pattern.

Every year I make a set of plans, lay out a bunch of goals. And every year I achieve.... some, at best. Last year I had 5 major goals, and achieved 1. If life was school, I'd be sitting up the back of the classroom with the guys who started shaving in year 5, wearing boxing gloves so I don't interfere with myself in front of the librarian....

So this year, 3 goals.

Finish the Corpse-Rat King edits.
Finish and submit Marching Dead.
Finish and submit Father Meurte & The Divine.

Forget weight loss. Forget gardening. Forget nebulous feel good back rubs of the soul. 2012 is where I produce novels.

Booyah.

COME IN 2011, YOUR TIME IS UP.

2011-12-31T16:42:00.001+08:00

And so it was, and so it is, and so what? Here's my year in a nut case: pack it, and get out.

1. What did you do in 2011 that you'd neverdone before? Sell anovel. (Yeah, there’s going to be a theme to this year’s list…). Acquire anagent. Teachon online writing course.

2. Did you keep your new years' resolutions, and will youmake more for next year? I had 5goals. I met one. If not for the one big success it would have been a year madeof fail. I’ve set some goals for 2012, and am guaranteed to make at least acouple—can you say ‘contractual obligations’, my darlings?

3. Did anyone close to you give birth? Not this year. One to comein 2012, it appears.

4. Did anyone close to you die? No.

5. What countries did you visit? I visited Country Road, butit just took me home, to the place where I belong. Which appears to be WestVirginia. Weird.

6. What would you like to have in 2012 that you lacked in2011? Moneymoney money money money money. Money.

7. What dates from 2011 will remain etched upon your memory,and why? 26^thOctober. “Dear Lee. On behalf of Angry Robot…” The day my career changedimmeasurably.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year? Selling my novel. Followedin quick succession, as it was in reality, by securing the services of myagent. Both are big stepping stones in my projected career arc, and achievingthem has left me looking forward at an entirely different vista than the one Icontemplated at the start of the year. My career has been refreshed in everyway possible.

9. What was your biggest failure? Pretty much everything else.Apart from that one big moment, I never really got going this year. It was ayear of stagnation on just about every front.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury? Stayed fairly clear ofanything major this year, but my base level of discomfort from the accumulatedniggles and lack of alignment, was high.

11. What was the best thing you bought? Hmm. I’d say “all the Legowe accumulated”, on the basis that it’s given the kids and I a common hobby andproven to be a household item that has attracted almost everyone to squat downon the floor around the spread-out sheet and share the simple joy of playingand chatting together, except that Lyn might scream and beat me to death with a16x16 baseplate. I’d also have nominated the good quality vacuum cleaner we purchasedwith some of my tutoring money which, after a series of crappy off-the-shelfmodels, is proving to be the super-duper carpet thrasher we’ve needed foryears. But I’m going to go with the bikes we got the kids for Christmas:watching the kids ride has motivated us to break our own dust-covered treddliesout of the garage, and decide as a family to ride together at least once aweek, weather permitting, and to incorporate riding into all our holiday andday off plans. So, on the basis that they’ll give us a wonderful new outlet forenjoying our family time, they win.

12. Whose behaviour merited celebration? Aiden, once, again, who tookon responsibilities beyond his age, and was rewarded with betrayal. Lyn, whoworked ceaselessly to provide the family a hub to revolve around, and whocontinues to put the world before herself.

13. Whose behaviour made you appalled and depressed? Aiden’s (now) ex-girlfriend,who exposed all her immature failings in one fell swoop, and destroyed theirrelationship, then continued to act in a manger guaranteed to lose all the goodwill and care she had built up with our family over the last two years. Aformer friend of Lyn’s, who has proven herself to be the two-faced hypocrite Ihave spent years pretending not to recognise for one.

14. Where did most of your money go? As far as I can tell, asmall black hole somewhere to the east of the ecliptic plane. Also, Lego.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about? The upswing in my writingcareer, that has taken from me from a moribund and directionless short storywriter into a new and exciting sphere of possibility.

16. What song will always remind you of 2011? Antisocial Tendencies, bythis year’s big discovery, Dog Trumpet. A gentle, yet pained, nod to thepersonal journeys that make a man, and the understanding that sometimes, beingunmutual is part of what you need to be the person you need to be.

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:i. happier orsadder? ii. thinner or fatter? iii. richer or poorer? Pretty much level pegging on all counts.Life, for all its current complications, still smells pretty good, andeverything else can be dealt with as it arises. Holding pattern, withexpectations of movement in the coming year.

18. What do you wish you'd done more of? Progressing my lifestyle.Holding patterns are all very well, but the view starts to get a bit boringafter a while.

19. What do you wish you'd done less of? Losing focus, and being demoralised. A newset of career goals will serve to change that in the coming year.

20. How did you spend Christmas? Building my enormous LegoChristmas present, being teetotal, and picking Aiden up from work. Just likemost other Sundays.

21. Who did you meet for the first time? In the flesh, and very briefly, the membersof the Perth Adult Lego Society. In the electro, Lee, Marcand Amanda, the Angry Robot luminaries. And the Anxious Appliances, finefellows and novelists one and all, who gathered around a booth at the back ofthe imaginary tavern that is the Angry Robot Waiting Club and raised mugs ofimaginary ale to our continued health.

22. Did you fall in love in 2011? Nobody new. Kept the viewfocussed inward, and rewarded myself with enjoying my family.

23. What was your favourite TV program? HorribleHistories winshands down. An historical sketch show for kids based on the Terry Deary booksof the same name, it’s so clever, witty and engaging that it’s become a firmfavourite of all of us, and has been on high rotation viewing all year. Nocontest.

We also discovered thewonderful imagination of Bryan Fuller, a man who writes TV worlds like the onesI want to create in my works. Dead Like Me and Pushing Daisies were bothdevoured: lyrical, engaging, and delightfully quirky series’ that still managedto be deadly serious and intensly human when it mattered. Wonderful stuff.

24. Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this timelast year? No hate,but deep distaste and no small measure of contempt for those who betrayed myson's and wife’s trust and love.

25. What was the best book you read? Morethan a few biographies in the mix this year, and the best of the lot was TheMind and Times of Reg Mombassa by Murray Waldren. I’ve been using Goodreadsto keep track for the last 12 months, and you can read my review of it here.

Honourable Mentions to:

Charles Manson: Coming Down Fast— Simon Wells

Booklife—Jeff Vandermeer

The Man in my Basement—Walter Mosely

Lego: A Love Story— Jonathan Bender

Omni Visions 2—Ellen Datlow (ed)

The City & The City by China Meivelle

There were a few real stinkers in the pile too, and worst of thelot were the following:

Lost in a Good Book—Jasper Fforde

The Enterprise of Death-- Jesse Bullington

Heliotrope-- Justina Robson

26. What was your greatest musical discovery? Dog Trumpet, the duo formedby Reg Mombassa and Peter O’Doherty after leaving Mental as Anything, combinethe quirkiness of the Mentals’ best moments with a simplicity of approach andgentility that really struck a chord with me this year. I also revisited mylove of Ian Dury after reading a particularly good biography, and have been luxuriatingin the nasty brilliance of his lyrics all over again.

27. What was your favourite film of this year? After last year’s embarrassment of richesit was a pretty thin year this time out. Not a bad year, as such, but simply arather ordinary one, with very little that excited or stirred the senses. Therewere, however, a couple of good ‘acting’ movies that stood out for me. The King’sSpeech and The Yellow Room are both what I would call ‘good old-fashionedEnglish’ movies, in that simple direction, superb acting, and high-qualityscripts do more than a million Hollywood explosions to draw you in and keep youengaged until the very final moment.

Sadly, the Will FerrellMemorial Tower of Crap Award this year has to go to the by-product of one ofour favourite televisual moments: the telemovie Dead Like Me: Life After Deathpicks up on the series 5 years after its conclusion, and somehow manages toignore and/or betray everything the original series had built up, portrayingdeep and human characters in buffoonish and dislikeable ways in a plot thatgoes out of its way to insult the intelligence of the viewer. Not just a disappointment, itleft me feeling like the creators were actively expressing their hatred oftheir own audience. Dishonourable mentions for Grass, a movie so bad it became thefirst film in several years that I’ve failed to finish, and Rango, a big-budgetanimated so-what-who-cares-a-thon that had so little to recommend it that evenour 6 year old was bored.

28. What did you do on your birthday, and howold were you? I turned41, and built Lego while eating in front of the TV. I am a grown up.


29. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying? Membership in the Green Lantern Corps. And punching Ryan Reynolds in the face. The two may not necessarily be unconnected. 

30. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2011? ‘Concept’ is a very strong word…

31. What kept you sane? You can’t fool me. There ain’t no Sanity Clause.

32. What political issue stirred you the most? FIFA, racism, and the widespread corruption and general shittification of the sport I love. 

33. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2011. We must cultivate our own garden. 

34. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year.

Delusions of grandeur, delusions of grandeur

I'm a dedicated follower of my own success

I can handle the glamour, I can cope with the stress

Deal with the doughnuts and please all the rest

I'm polite to the punters and sweet to the press

I just won a trophy from a radio station

I'm leaving my bat and my balls to the nation

I've got megalomania, I've got megalomania

To be a twinkle in the show-biz dream

To which effect I could connive and scheme

I dive into the dairy and I lap up all the cream

I'm up to the armpits in self-esteem

                               --Delusions of Grandeur, Ian Dury & The Blockheads

PSSST... BUDDY.... WANNA READ A BOOK?

2011-12-19T17:48:00.004+08:00

Are you an opinionated reader who wishes they could tell moron authors how they should write their goddamn books?

Got nothing to fill your evenings between now and the end of February? Looking for a break from bad porn, cheetos, and waking up at midnight covered in cat hair and your own sick?

Wanna have a read of something cool before the unwashed masses get their grubby hands all over it and turn it into some shitty teen movie with a poncey monobrowed git in it so you can act all superior and mumble about how you were into it before it became all popular and commercialised and cheapened and shit?

Then you've come to the right place, my friends!

I'm looking for beta readers to road test The Corpse-Rat King and tell me if I've missed anything in the ~~couple of slack read throughs I've meandered through~~ exhaustive editing process I've undertaken so far.

In return for spending your time snuggled up with a MS Word copy of the manuscript you'll get a thank you in the acknowledgements and I'll kill off an anagrammatically altered namesake* of you in the sequel. Deal?

First half a dozen or so people to email me get the gig.

* Playing with such things has led me to realise that my darling's maiden name -- Lyn Kiely-- makes Nyl Likey, which may set the record for the crappiest Porn name in all creation......

GRINCHY ROBOT

2011-12-18T15:06:00.000+08:00

Over at the Angry Robot website, I've joined in their 12 Days of Christmas series of guest posts with a missive discussing my somewhat... convoluted... relationship with that time of year when we teach children that it's okay for a drunk, fat stranger to force cattle to pull heavy loads across millions of miles without rest, feed or palliative care whilst he commits several million B&Es to leave gifts for small children without anyone ever once mentioning the concept of grooming....

You've been with me long enough to know what I'm like. Won't it be fun exposing the Angry Robot readers to my way of thinking? >:)

The whole post is here. Go, read, comment, scare the shit out of the Angry Robot overlords when they realise how many of us there are......

WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED THERE?

2011-12-12T08:00:00.001+08:00

Hm. Friday my computer goes spla, Saturday my blog goes spla, and I lose my lovely template.

I don't get my computer back for at least another week. Consider this grim and featureless black and grey vista a temporary measure. Something you'll look at now because you're forced to but will forget as soon as something even remotely acceptable comes along.

Think of it as a Jennifer Aniston movie.

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN!

2011-12-09T08:10:00.001+08:00

980.

That's how many novels were submitted to the Angry Robot Open Submission Month, back in March. And after 9 months, 3 novelists have emerged as new Angry Robot authors.

3 out of 980.

And I'm one of them.

As of late last night, Perth time, all the agent-robot negotiations have ceased, contracts have been signed and returned, blood has been spilled, sperm has been frozen in jars, children have been sent to labour camps, bios have been written, announcements have been posted, and I can now officially announce that The Corpse-Rat King and a sequel, titled Rising Dead (until I can convince the Angry Robot overlords I have a better title) have been bought, with the first to appear late in 2012 and the second in 2013.

You may consider me more than a little rapt :)

10 YEARS ON

2011-12-09T07:57:00.001+08:00

It's December 9 2011.

For those who came in late, today marks 10 years since my wife, Sharon, went into surgery to discover the source of an infection that had taken hold of her since our first child had been born four days earlier. She never regained consciousness, and died later that evening. She was 32.

As decades go, it's been a turbulent one. I find myself, 10 years later, in a loving, happy marriage, with children-- both genetic and inherited-- who fill me with laughter and delight, in a day job that stimulates and inspires me, with a writing career that (as you shall soon read) is about to step up to a level that I didn't even envisage back in 2001, when I was still coming to terms with a major car accident, had my 2nd short story sale under my belt, and was a Tax Officer expecting his first child. I am, quite simply, not the man I was 10 years ago. I have rebuilt my life, and am happy with it. But I've had to fight for that happiness, every inch of the way, and many people who could not make the adjustment, who would not allow me the chance to try, who needed me to remain as I was-- tortured and tragic and a convenient source for pity-- have not made it to this point of my journey with me.

Sharon should never have died. But for the criminal negligence of an incompetent doctor, she would still be alive, and the life I have, vastly different though it would have been, would have been hers to share. She was a beautiful, lively, and wondrous person, and she deserved a life to match. And I wish nothing but pain and anguish upon the man who took it away from her. I will never forgive him.

But I survived, and I have found incredible happiness with the beautiful and inspirational woman who shares my life, and I cannot look around me and see anything that matters to me that does not give me joy.

A decade can be a long time. But you have to work at it.

MOC ME AT YOUR PERIL

2011-11-16T17:49:00.001+08:00

The world is in danger. The skies are filled with enemies. If this was the 19th century, HG Wells and Richard Burton would kick some serious arse, using only the medium of tiny little germs and a great big rock and roll orchestra.

But these are the medieval times, and Rock Opera is a mere twinkle in Rick Wakeman's glitter-bedecked ancestor's eyes. Thankfully, someone cares. Someone is watching. Someone Samurai...... -ey.

This is the Samurai SETI Research Station.

Whilst students confer outside, Samurai Masters 'Tears Paper Into Strips' and 'Wood Sliver Beneath Skin' ponder the Universe via the Jade Eye of seeing and the Bone Location Wheel. meanwhile, a new student known as 'Derek' rests, having journeyed from a land far, far away....

Samurai SETI Research Station. Making the world safe for people who fight in slow motion, and whose lips don't quite move in synch with their words...

NANOWRIMO: MORE THAN HALF WAY THROUGH, AND WHAT HAVE I GOT?

2011-11-16T17:38:00.001+08:00

A lot of catching up to do, that's what.

My problem is, I've spent quite a lot of the month setting events up so that other people can reach their word counts. No complaints: it's my job, and I get paid quite nicely to do it. But my own word count has suffered while I do so.

My default attitude to such setbacks is, well, fairly egocentric: I may not have written (insert correct number) of words, but the ones I have written are saleable. I'd rather have (pathetic total I've managed to reach) saleable words than (much larger total I should have reached by now) shit ones. When you're as good as I am, you don't need to rush. Just get the job done right.

I mentioned the egocentric bit, right?

This attitude, of course, works if you're sure the ones you've written will sell. Otherwise, you do kind of come across like the guy who boasts about having umpty million sales without mentioning that you've sold half of them to yourself, or that bloke at the other end of the bar with the bomber jacket and doberman pinscher talking about what a stud he is, but his big 4 wheel drive seems suspiciously empty of girlfriend....

I, of course, have a magnificent track record when it comes to novels. You'll remember my stunning debut.... uh.... and of course, who could forget the breakthrough trilogy, The.... ummm... Chronicles? Then of course..... oh, all right.

Back to the word mines.

If anybody sees my doberman pinscher, tell him to come home. I'm lonely, and I don't like the dark.

So far, so... far.

FIRST OPEN ROBOT AUTHORS ANNOUNCED

2011-11-16T17:33:00.001+08:00

Congratulations to Cassandra Rose Clarke and Lee Collins, the first authors from the Angry Robot Open Submission Month to be announced as having signed contract with the publisher. Cassandra and Lee's books sound, well, ominously awesome.

You can read the full announcement here. Angry Robot editor Lee Harris has promised more announcements soon, so keep your ears to the, uh, internet?

IT'S NOT A KID'S TOY IF YOU CAN MAKE IT COMPETITIVE

2011-11-13T16:13:00.001+08:00

You'd probably be surprised to hear it, but there aren't that many places in Mandurah for a fat middle-aged man to hang out with others and explore his hobby in a relaxed social setting if his hobby happens to be a kid's toy like Lego.

There's probably not many places to go if your hobby is sodomising kittens, either, but hey, I zigged instead of zagged and went with Lego.

Imagine my delight, then, when I discovered the world of LUGS. Lego User Groups, organisations of AFOLs (Adult Fans of Lego) who do just that. Get together and do the Lego thing, not the kitten thing. Forget the kitten thing. Jeez. Sorry I even brought it up.

So I get in touch. I'm just getting back into the hobby, I've seen some of your stuff on the net-- and bugger me, the stuff this group does is astonishing-- I'd like to come up and find out what you're all about. After a while, I get a reply. I can't have been the only one asking, because it's a form reply.

They've got a new HQ, and they'd be interested in a small selection of new members. Provided you build to a high enough standard. Please send us some images of your MOCs so we can decide if you're good enough.

Really.

I know I'm a crazy, wacky old curmudgeon, but my impression of Lego was that it was a kids toy, something adults could enjoy and hey, if you look at guys like Nathan Sawaya, blow the minds of the world with. But exclusionary? I'd rather sit on the floor with my kids and build spaceships and open air cafes than try to persuade someone that I'm good enough to play in their clubhouse. I stopped paying that shit the last time I grew out of Lego. I just want somewhere to play with like minded PALS.

A pal of mine is a member of MUGS, the Melbourne Lego user group. She's trying to persuade me to start my own LUG: the region is big enough to support another group, and I'd prefer not to have to travel to Perth just to play with others. Lyn will let me think about it if I get her a chihuahua. You know what I think about dogs, right? Does the fact I'm actually thinking about letting her have one explain my feelings on the subject?

High enough standard.

MandUGS? ManUGS? PUGS? SPUGS?......

THE ANSWER TO THE QUESTION OF LIFE, THE UNIVERSE AND EVERYTHING. MINUS ONE.

2011-11-13T15:43:00.001+08:00

So I turned 41 two days ago. And it probably says a lot about the state of mind that I find myself in these days that this year's present of choice was, you guessed it, Lego.

Two very cool kits made it into my collection: the fun-to-build and adaptable Creator Log Cabin, with three different designs of varying degrees of difficulty and a whole host of blocks, plates, roof slopes and basic elements that make me itchy to play about with architectural designs. And with $50 from my father and stepmother, I stepped out to the shops and came home with the mad-as-a-mad-thing Space Truck Getaway set from the Space Police III series, a bunch of sets I love for their insane space-punk look, plethora of speciality parts, and alien minifigs that were obviously the result of the designers getting a little too smashed at a Friday sundowner one week and seeing what they could get past the bosses.

They're also all but off the shelves in my lonely corner of the world. I got lucky with this one because I managed to find it tucked down in between shelving units at my local Toyworld, where it had obviously been knocked off, slipped down, and become both stuck and forgotten over time. That, my friends, is what we call a score :)

Then out of nowhere, Luscious Lyn's best friend Catherine came over to attend the Nanowrimo Night of Writing Dangerously event I had organised for last night, and presented me with the enormous Alien Invasion Mothership, with another bucketful of fun specialty parts including the much-wanted by Connor Lime Clinger, so it was happy building time all round!

My darling, naturally, both went against the general theme and provided me with the most individually desired gift. It's our little ritual to provide each other with a book, and The Monster's Corner is one that prompted instant lust when stumbled upon in a bookshop recently: how could you not want it once you spy that cover?

Straight to the top of my reading pile, baby! :))

41 isn't any different to 40, of course, and a birthday really isn't any different to any other day of the week, especially if you don't get the day off work to laze about and pretend you're King of the House. But this year it's been an indicator, and high watermark, of big changes in my way of life. In the weeks leading up to it I've entered into a quantum change in writing direction, engaging an agent and pretty much completing the switch from short story writer to novelist; I've embarked on a series of projects that will lead me into a new sphere of professional work; and I've re-engaged with a childhood pleasure that's given me an outlet that I can pursue purely for fun's sake-- writing might be my major outlet, and it might be fun, but it's been several years since I've approached any writing with 'just fun' in mind. I'm a writer. I sell what I write. It's always a business.-- I joke about my sudden Lego addiction, and my family jokes with me, but their willingness to indulge me and gift me with sets and time to piggle about with them show they understand the pleasure I'm deriving from it.

My family made my birthday special, as they always do, but it's the acceptance and indulgence they afford me that keeps me smiling.

THE LAST DANGEROUS CARROT: ANGELA SLATTER

2011-11-13T15:13:00.001+08:00

So this is it: the final entry in my Treacherous Carrots series of guest blogs. A massive tilt of the glass to everyone who came along with me on this. Here's hoping you've enjoyed what you've read. But don't leave just yet, not until you've read what Angela has to say. And when it comes to the subject of art, she should know: Her work has appeared Dreaming Again, Strange Tales II & III, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, A Book of Horrors, Mammoth Book of New Horror #22, and Year’s Best Dark Fantasy and Horror 2011. She authored two collections in pretty bloody quick order last year-- Sourdough & Other Stories (Tartarus Press, UK), was shortlisted for a World Fantasy Award for Best Collection, and The Girl with No Hands & Other Tales (Ticonderoga Publications), won the 2011 Aurealis Award for Best Collection. and she's got yet another one coming out soon: Midnight and Moonshine, a collaboration with fellow carrot Lisa L Hannett, will soon be published by Ticonderoga. Their story “The February Dragon”, won the Aurealis Award for Best Fantasy Short Story in 2011. She also finds time to run her own wide-ranging and always fascinating blog right about here.

So here we are. One more carrot before bedtime.

---

The topic assigned by the boss of the blog is ‘Thewriter as artist’ and I’ve been thinking about it for a few weeks now, inbetween other time-consuming and annoying activities (PhD, day job, housework,etc). And it’s been making me grumpy because I can’t put my finger on aspecific answer to the implied question. It’s just given me a lot more questions,with no answers.

Where’sart come from?

Isit art just because I say it is?

Isit not art just because I don’t like it?

Isit only art only if paint is involved?

Howcan words be art?

Whojudges its value, gives a gold star, a mark out of ten?

Is art simply doingsomething for the sake of doing something?

Ifmy marks from the Australia Council are low, does it mean I’m a bad writer, abad artist, no matter how many awards I might win during my career?

Andwhat’s with this deathless prose gig?

Just because a lot ofpeople buy a book – just because it’spopular – does that make it ‘art’ regardless of grammar and spelling shortfallsand plot holes the size of the Grand Canyon?

Is art only somethingno one asked for in the first place? And if it’s something no one asked for inthe first place, is it fair to expect to be paid for it?

AndI’ve been wondering, do we ever sit down and think before we write ‘Today I’mgoing to commit art’?

I’ma writer who doesn’t even think about things like themes. I don’t think ‘I wantto achieve blah with this story’. I just write – it’s brain-vomit all over thepage (which begs the question: can vomit be art?). I’m not a tidy, organisedwriter – I don’t always know how a story is going to end, and sometimes evenwhen I think I do know how it’s going to end I find out I’m wrong at the –well, end.

SometimesI know the end but am completely in the dark about the beginning. Sometimes Ineed to spend ages talking to the main character and coaxing information out ofher/him, just so I can find out how the tale starts.

If I’m committingart, it’s unconscious. Writing for me is irresistible – if the urge hits thennotes must be made no matter what else I may be doing. This can make boringmeetings interesting – ‘What are you writing, Angela?’ – and family gatheringsstrange – ‘Where is she? Oh, no, she’s writing again.’ At lunch yesterday I wasdescribing the ‘Brisneyland by Night’ novels to my parents, who rolled theireyes and managed to say simultaneously ‘She’s your daughter!’

So a writer, like aprophet, knows no respect. We must get used to it.

The first time mySignificant Other witnessed an ‘art attack’ he was somewhat perplexed –understandably, seeing as how I leapt off the couch, shouting ‘Of course!Bleeding the cat!’ and then galloped to the study to write down the story notesbefore the spark died (and sanity took its place). My stories begin with afirst sentence ... or an image in my head ... or they’re set off by the wordsof a song ... or by looking at a painting or sculpture or drawing ... or justby looking at something in a different way and thinking ‘what if?’

Maybe that’s whereart comes from: from asking ‘what if?’ when everyone else is seeing what’sobvious. When everyone else is being obediently blind to possibilities. Maybeart is seeing what’s hidden, what’s possible, what’s potential. Maybe it’swriting that questions the status quo, that points fingers, that laughs wheneveryone’s telling the emperor he looks fabulous in his see-through pantaloons.

Thinking about thewriter as artist makes me nervous because then it makes me afraid that pickingapart art is like picking apart creativity in general – in playing around inthe innards of something to see what makes it tick you risk breaking the veryineffability of the thing. When you utter the secret name of something, it’s nolonger a secret and it loses it power – just ask Rumplestiltskin. And alwaysremember: a frog never comes out of a dissection well.

When I read somethingI want its effort and artistry to be invisible. I don’t want the writer to drawmy attention to how they’ve created an effect – if I’m reading to simply enjoythe work, I really don’t want signposts that say ‘Look how clever I am’. Pointingout the magic tends to make it very ordinary indeed. It’s like saying ‘Look!The angels are on wires!’ Equally, I don’t want to see clunky writing where theseams and stitches are there for all to see. I want the ‘art’ to appearseamless and whole. If I’m reading something specifically to examine the craft,then I am reading in a different way to reading for pleasure – I’m looking forthe nuts and bolts another writer has used. Their art is how they have hiddenthese things.

As a writer, the artfor me lies in what I hide and what I show – indeed, what can I show when I’mhiding something else. And what can I hide when I’m showing something again. Sohere, the writer as artist is the magician, the con wo/man, the trickster. Theart is in the sleight of hand; the art of the oblique.

If pushed, I thinkthe art lies in the spark – that moment when you’re writing for yourself alone,when there’s no thought of an audience or possible sales. I think art lies inthe unfolding of the story, the rush of inspiration, the chatter of all thevoices that live in your head and don’t require medication. Later, there isediting, polishing. Later, there is an audience. I think the moment of true,pure, primeval art lies in the moment of ‘what if?’

PENULTIMATE CARROT: LISA HANNETT

2011-11-06T16:18:00.001+08:00

Lisa L Hannett is quirky, highly talented, and living in Adelaide -- city of churches, bizarre murders and pie floaters -- so you know she knows all about suffering for your art. Her short stories have been published in venues including Clarkesworld Magazine, Fantasy Magazine, Weird Tales, ChiZine, Shimmer, Electric Velocipede, Tesseracts 14, and Ann & Jeff VanderMeer’s Steampunk II: Steampunk Reloaded, and she provided a creepy-as-all-fuck little gem for my issue of Midnight Echo to boot. The February Dragon, co-authored with upcoming carrotter Angela Slatter, won the 'Best Fantasy' Aurealis Award in 2010, so you know she's got chops.

Her first collection of short stories, Bluegrass Symphony, was published by Ticonderoga Publications in 2011. Midnight and Moonshine, a second collection co-authored with Angela Slatter, will be published in 2012. You can find her online at http://lisahannett.com.

---

In February 1880, William Morrisdelivered a lecture before the Birmingham Society of Arts and School of Design,which was later published in a book called Hopesand Fears for Art. It was during this public lecture, Morris’s first, thatthe philosophy driving the Arts & Crafts movement was famously summarised. “Ifyou want a golden rule that will fit everybody,” Morris declared, “this is it:Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to bebeautiful.”

Replace ‘houses’with ‘writing’ and now read that sentence aloud.

What you’ve justheard is the mantra that whispers through my mind every time I start writing astory — and which bludgeons me when I go to read one.

There are morethan enough mundane sentences in our world, and we’re bombarded by themrelentlessly. Work emails, text messages, TV commercials, ads on bus shelters,misspelled restaurant menus, tax forms, university websites, cereal boxes, DVDcases, instruction manuals, radio announcements, Woolworths flyers… Everywhere,everywhere, words. They all communicate messages to their readers, and mostserve a purpose — they do, in other words, what it says on the can — but thoughthey get us semantically from A to B, few people would classify these pieces ofwriting as Art (with a capital ‘A’).

It isn’t awriter’s job to merely get their readers from A to B, to facilitate theirjourney from plot point to plot point, from page one to page three hundred andseven. Writers have certainly made a contract with readers that they will dothese things — they will provide, to the best of their ability, a story worthspending precious hours of our lives reading — but there is no clause in thiscontract that states, “I, the Writer, promise to make you, the Reader, forgetthat you are involved in an Act of Literature.”

Writers compose. Writers conjure. Writers create.These are all words I associate with Art; so my hope, when I pick up a book, isto find Art trapped between its covers. My hope is to spend a few minutes,hours, days submerged in useful beauty.

Beautiful writingcan’t be superfluous — long before Shakespeare’s time we’ve beenwary of tales “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing” —so it must serve a purpose in the story. It must give us extra insight into thecharacters, their worlds, their plights. But being useful does not precludebeing beautiful: a well-crafted phrase, a symbolic image, a perfect metaphor canconvey emotion or give us a sense of place far more effectively than half adozen workaday sentences. In ‘The Wings of Mister Wilhelm’, Theodora Gosscould’ve said “The girl was a fine seamstress” but instead we learn that she“could make stitches a spider would be proud of” and so we understand thedelicacy of these stitches, how small they are, how many hours the girlwould’ve spent practising her craft. Webs and spiders and fine gossamer threadalso conjure up images of fairies and Queen Mab and dresses made of spidersilk— all of which add to the magical tone of this story.

When we read “Hewants the redness to spill from him like a scent” in the ‘Cranberry CreamedHoney’ entry of Amal El-Mohtar’s TheHoney Month, we don’t merely imagine blood spilling from veins, but alsothe cranberries from the story’s title, crushed and juicy; rich garnet tonesand dark forests filled with fruit; love, but equally, danger. This image notonly suits the tone of the piece — it also helps to set it.

It might not besurprising that these two authors have both earned critical acclaim as poets —a particular breed of artist that agonises over word choice more acutely thanmost. The most useful aspect of this beautiful writing is that it succinctlyand simultaneously conveys many possible meanings; it slows the reading processjust enough to allow readers to bathein the richness of words.

You needn’t be apoet to convey multiple meanings so effectively. In ‘Dradin, In Love’, JeffVanderMeer could’ve simply said that Dradin looked out his window at a humidcity at night, a sensual city — a City of Saints and Madmen, if you will —and all of these descriptions would have given us some idea of theprotagonist’s state of mind. But instead, he tells us that the city “lay insidethe cupped hands of a valley veined with tributaries of the Moth. It was therethat ordinary people slept and dreamt not of jungles and humidity and the lustthat fed and starved men’s hearts, but of quiet walks under the stars andmilk-fat kittens and the gentle hum of wind…” Veins and hands cupped andhumidity and lust and people sleeping all convey sensuality and suffocatingcloseness and tactility and the heat-fever of love, without having to say it inso many words. And if “ordinary people” spend their nights dreaming sweet,milk-fat kitten dreams, then what does that tell us about Dradin, whoseinsomnia keeps him awake and staring, voyeuristically, out over the slumberingcity?

These symbols,similes, metaphors, clever turns-of-phrase, speak to us in a way thatstraightforward prose isn’t designed to — they speak straight to that wistful,intangible part of ourselves that weeps at the sound of an orchestral swell, orgets goosebumps at the sight of a Pre-Raphaelite painting. This type of writingmay not get us to point B without travelling to M and X and Z first, but weneed this type of Art just as much as we need an outlet for escape intowondrous worlds. The function of this beauty is to take us out of the realm ofeveryday language, and to remind us of the mind-blowing power of fine words.

My fear is thattoo many writers, genre or otherwise, are forced to sacrifice beauty forproductivity. Publishing is a competitive business; there are more writers,more editors, more stories out there than a whole world of readers can possiblyget to know in one lifetime. People aren’t paid sufficiently for art, they arepaid for product. Churn out a series of shit books about sparkly vampires andyou’ll likely be able to buy ten houses to fill with Morris’ beautiful things;but write a dozen near-perfect award-winning stories in a decade (á la Ted Chiang) and you’ll probably spendmore time working in a carpeted grey office cubicle than you will be surroundedby Arts & Crafts treasures. (But a particular shade of grey can offer aneutral backdrop upon which many fine writers, often masquerading as officeclerks, have hung colourful daydreams. And come nightfall these reveries aretransformed into awesome books…)

The Romantic inme wishes writers could survive on beauty alone. The writer in me not onlywants but needs to be inspired andencouraged by fine literary art, by the perpetual magic of words. Thepragmatist in me would love it if we were able to find a balance between commercialsuccess and artistry, productivity and grandeur. Hmmmm…. Beauty and financial stability… What could bemore useful than that?

NANO: END OF THE FIRST WEEKEND

2011-11-06T16:12:00.000+08:00

So far, so good Corpse-Rat lovers, and yes I know how bad that sounds, but think of the fun that's going to cause on the search engines :)

It's been one hell of a disrupted weekend: on Friday we moved the Teen Family into their new digs across town, and on Saturday morning moved our son back after a split-up that can only be described as 'messy', although 'used and betrayed' also springs to mind. Much comfort and support has been offered, and much future will now hopefully be grasped with both hands.

But amongst it all, I've managed to get some keyboard time, and as always seems to be the case when I push the writing processes a little harder than they might be ready for, subplots have revealed themselves with startling regularity. One of the hard parts of writing a sequel-- a task I've only attempted with the Father Muerte short stories-- is trying to creating the core of what made the original work without repeating yourself in either action, theme, or consequence. Unless, of course, you're Piers Anthony, in which case, only the names have been changed to protect the gullible....

But progress it does, and in a way that's keeping me entertained. Let's hope that continues. For at least another 89 000 words, anyway...

NANOWRIMO DAY ONE

2011-11-01T21:47:00.001+08:00

You know how it is when you're all prepared to spend a month writing 50 000 words of a novel, and you have a cool title and a kinda-sorta-as-much-as-you-ever-have idea of, if not how the whole thing is going to go, well, at least kinda-sorta-as-much-as-you-ever-have how the thing is going to start, right?

And you know how you wake up on day one of the month, knowing you need to write at least 1667 words of this idea today, and back that up tomorrow, and the day after and so on, and the little man who lives at the back of your mind shows up in his coat and hat, carrying a suitcase, and posts a sticky note on the back of your eyes that says simply "Fuck you, buddy, you're on your own."?

Sigh.

Goodbye The Sin-Eater's Lonely Children. Hello Corpse-Rat King: Rising Dead.

I wasn't going to write a sequel. I really wasn't. But, you know, I got me an agent, and I had the idea kicking about, and it escalates really nicely from the first book.....

Nanowrimo day one:

1836 / 50000 (3.67%)

NEWS. GOOD NEWS.

2011-10-31T19:37:00.003+08:00

As of this week, I have an agent :)

I am now represented by Richard Henshaw, of the Richard Henshaw Agency.

I hope you know what you're doing :)

PLENTY OF TIME BEFORE NANO STARTS AGAIN... OH, SHIT.

2011-10-31T19:35:00.001+08:00

So Nanowrimo officially starts in 4 hours and 26 minutes.

shit shit shit shit shit shit shit shit shit shit shit shitshit shit shit shit shit shitshit shit shit shit shit shit.

See, much of my day job these past few weeks has involved getting a literary programme up and running to coincide with Nanowrimo. And I've done, if I may say so myself, a pretty damn good job: Juliet Marillier is coming down to give two Master Classes; Anna Jacobs and Bevan McGuiness will be presiding over a writing marathon with over 20 sponsors providing prizes and promotional material to give away; I've got regular write-ins happening; and if all goes to plan I'll be announcing a new poetry competition, judged by Maureen Sexton, to tie in with one of our major sculpture exhibitions. All in all, it's looking like liter-a-frikkin-palooza.

Only problem is, I've done sod-all preparation of my own.

I've never headed into a Nano with anything less than a firm idea of where I'll be in 50K time: whether it be a project I was already 10 000 words into (Corpse-Rat King), or one involving characters I'd worked with 4 times before and a couple of thousand words of notes I'd accumulated over six years of thinking about the plot (Father Muerte & The Divine), I've always known exactly what was likely to happen, where I was going, and where I expected to be at the end of the month.

This time, I have a title and the opening of the first scene.

Wish me luck.

TREACHEROUS CARROTS: HELEN VENN

2011-10-31T19:21:00.000+08:00

Helen Venn is one of the loveliest ladies in writing, and for a variety of reasons, one of the bravest SF people I've met, reasons which include being utterly willing to stand up and call bullshit on anybody in the middle of an illogical or disagreeable rant. Including me on more than once occasion. I love her combination of gentility and steel, the best example of which occurred during Clarion South when, during a patented Battersby diatribe on the difference between 'jet fighters' and 'bus drivers' she very calmly waited for a break in the action and firmly declared "I like being a bus driver." She's fabulous, as you can discover at her blog and the Egoboo collective, but she never set out to write SF. She began writing literary shortstories and poems. Now, no matterhow hard she tries, she ends up with speculative fiction. She has placed in various competitions (most recently a finalist in the first Quarterof Writers of the Future). She attended Clarion South in 2007 and was an Emerging Writer in Residence at TomCollins House Writers’ Centre in 2009. She is currently working on her secondnovel.

---

I comefrom a family of artists. One brother is a textile artist, another dabbles inmetal sculpture and my niece is a professional water colourist mostly paintingportraits. Going back further I had a great uncle who professionally createdexquisite jewellery. Hell, I even married into a family of artists. Myfather-in-law was a talented amateur landscape artist. You'd think some of itwould have rubbed off on me but no. As far as the visual arts go anything Iproduce is derivative and, let's face it, not very exciting, so I reallyhaven't ever thought of myself as an artist. Until now.

Lee'squestion has had me thinking about my writing in a way I had not before. I'vealways loved words and what they are capable of. I taught myself to read before I went toschool partly because words fascinated me and partly because they opened up awhole different world to me. As a seven and eight year old I used to sit on theliving room floor (because the giant one volume dictionary that stood on thebottom shelf of the bookcase was too heavy to lift) and read it, opening pagesat random for the joy of learning new words. i still get waylaid by new wordsin a thesaurus whenever I venture into one to the point that, unless I havetime to indulge myself, I now use on-line versions or I'll find myself hours later wanderingthrough words that are fascinating but have no connection to what I was lookingfor.

All thisis a round about way of saying that, although words always fascinated me, ittook me a long while to realise that, yes, I am an artist in my own way. Unlikeall those other artists in my family I use words to create my art. I see myselfprimarily as a story teller - someone who takes words and melds and crafts theminto something that is bigger than its individual parts. Those words (whatevertheir form they are used in - and my writing ranges from fiction, both shortand long, poetry, reviews, blogging, articles and non-fiction) are my paints,the word processing system I'm using - might be a pen or a computer. It doesn'tmatter - is my paint brush or paletteknife and the paper or computer screen they end up on is my canvas.

Thisapplies to all writers to one degree or another. When I look at the bestwriters I am struck by the fact that, within the structure of a good story,they do much more. They play with language, stretching it and using it tocreate images that are as tangible as those on canvas. They don't set out to preachbut they do present the reader with ideas. They explore important issues insociety and make us think about them. The best stories will stay in ourmemories long after we've finished them and this is characteristic of all art.It makes us think and expands our knowledge of ourselves, both as individualsand as a human being and this is true of all art.

It speaksto the mind and the heart. It may challenge, delight, infuriate or fascinateus. It doesn't matter which emotion it provokes, as long as it provokes one.It's this quality that defines art and it's as true of writing as any of theother arts.

So yes, Ican finally acknowledge I am an artist.

AND I SHALL CALL HIM.... MINIMOC

2011-10-26T18:28:00.004+08:00

A teensy-tiny little MOC I absent-mindedly piggled together last night while watching The Deadly Assassin. 7 pieces each, which is my mini-est mini so far.

First one to call out "Walllllll-eeee" gets a pair of binoculars in the bathers area....

I think they're kind of cute. They're also symptomatic of the problems associated with keeping 6000 pieces of LEGO in one big tub but not wanting to sort it all out into separate boxes because you don't want to a) stifle the kids' creativity and b) sort the bloody things back into separate boxes when the kids invariably mix them up.

If you don't want to make a massive clatter shifting plates large pieces around because you're trying to watch your show, this is the sort of thing you end up with.

But I do think they're kind of cute.

RORY WILLIAMS: HARD AS FUCK

2011-10-22T19:12:00.001+08:00

As if anybody ever needed proof that Rory is rapidly becoming the Best Companion Ever (tm):

see more

Smurched from Cheeseburger.com. Authorised by the first precepts of Universal Truth.

GET ONE IN YA!

2011-10-22T15:53:00.004+08:00

Anywhere But Earth, which features my story At The End There Was a Man, is now available from the Coeur De Lion online store.

29 stories of humanity's experiences of, well, anywhere but Earth, featuring the likes of Margo Lanagan, Richard Harland, Robert Hood and Jason Fischer, and clocking in at a spine-bending 728 pages, this is going to be the biggest anthology released in Australia this year. Quite literally.

Yon Liney Uppey:

Calie Voorhis-- Murmer
Cat Sparks-- Beautiful
Simon Petrie-- Hatchway
Lee Battersby-- At the End There Was a Man
Alan Baxter-- Unexpected Launch
Richard Harland-- An Exhibition of the Plague
Robert N Stephenson-- Rains of la Strange
Liz Argall-- Maia Blue is Going Home
Chris McMahon-- Memories of Mars
CJ Paget-- Pink Ice in the Jovian Rings
Penelope Love-- SIBO
Donna Maree Hanson-- Beneath the Floating City
Erin E Stocks-- Lisse
William RD Wood-- Deuteronomy
Robert Hood-- Desert Madonna
Steve de Beer-- Psi World
Damon Shaw-- Continuity
Wendy Waring-- Alien Tears
Patty Jansen-- Poor Man’s Travel
Jason Fischer-- Eating Gnashdal
Kim Westwood-- By Any Other Name
Brendan Duffy-- Space Girl Blues
TF Davenport-- Oak with the Left Hand
Sean McMullen-- Spacebook
Margo Lanagan-- Yon Horned Moon
Mark Rossiter-- The Caretaker
Jason Nahrung-- Messiah on the Rock
Angela Ambroz-- Pyaar Kiya
Steve Cameron-- So Sad, the Lighthouse Keeper

You know you want one. No more talking. Just go.

WE LET THIS GUY BE THE FATHER OF OUR GENRE. AREN'T YOU PROUD?

2011-10-22T15:39:00.002+08:00

Smurched from Roger Ebert's Blog, via a head-up from Cat Sparks. I'm just all warm and fuzzy inside knowing I work in a genre that contains the inventor of the DIY steampunk gimp mask....

TREACHEROUS CARROTS: TRENT JAMIESON

2011-10-22T15:32:00.002+08:00

Trent Jamieson is a stylist, as anyone who has read one of his lyrical, poetic stories can tell you. He's published over sixty of them, as well as the Death Works Trilogy with Orbit Books and the Nightbound Land duology with Angry Robot Books. When not writing, which as far as I can tell, is never, he works at the Avid Reader Bookshop in West End. he lives in Brisbane with his wife Diana, and has a funky website over here.

---

Art for me is breath. It's the rough stuff, the rhythms that are life. It's the truths that come out in even the most fantastical of writing.

I think we're all art and flawed and wonderful, and all those other things that people are. Art's the honest and the lying structure that binds the structureless. It's like those pockets of order that form out of chaos (those pockets that make things like matter and thought possible, we live in one of them).

It's the pompous, bittersweet lines of a Smiths song, or a poem by Blake, or that scene when the first bear enters the magical (but oh so stifling) world of Margo Lanagan's book Tender Morsels.

It's high, it's low, it's clever, it’s as stupid as a pulse. And just as vital because it signals life.

I think the moment that you set out to capture something in words, music, talk, drawing, mathematics or whatever, you're making art.

I think it's the second most important thing to life, and love (maybe the most important thing, because it gives those other two voice). It's play, pure and simple, even when it's the most important subjects that are being discussed (and don't forget that play is how animals learn to hunt and to flee the hunter and both skills are as serious as life).

Sometimes we're frightened to say that we're artists. We're frightened to commit and be true to our desire for a voice.

I say, fuck that, we're artists one and all. Even if we don’t recognise it. We all say and dream things, and, occasionally, we bridge the cruel gap between our skulls and those of others. Art is the tiger burning bright, it is the destroyer and the creator and the double-decker bus. It's the world that we have made and unmade.

Art is breath. And breath is voice. And sometimes it stinks. Art isn't always good, but who says it has to be good. Who hasn't woken up to the love of their life and breathed in their morning breath? And what heartless bastard would stop loving them.

Art's like that. Well, at least I think it is, which will have to do.

A LITTLE BIT OF GOODREADERY

2011-10-19T17:13:00.000+08:00

Wanna see my impression of someone who's only just learned you can cross-post a Goodreads review to his blog?

The Mind and Times of Reg Mombassa by Murray Waldren
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A fascinating and comprehensive look into the mind of a genuine art polymath. The design of the book is beautiful, with countless Mombassa artworks displayed throughout the 400 pages-- the dust cover even folds out to reveal one lurking on the flip side-- and the wit, humour, and down-to-earth nature of O'Doherty the man, as well as Mombassa the creation, shines.

My only criticism comes from Murray Waldren's journalistic writing style: events are presented with little variation in sense of importance-- the fallout from the band's 'Australian Made' appearances is presented with the same level tone as O'Doherty's childhood holidays, and occasionally things are left in the wake of Waldren's rush to fit every available anecdote into the page count-- for example, when brother Peter O'Doherty decides to leave Mental as Anything after 24 years because of health issues, it's the first time his health issues are even mentioned, which lessons the impact.

But there's simply so *much* of Mombassa's life to fit into the book that it's a small complaint, and overall, the book is a superb encapsulation of a music and art career that has not only accompanied a critical period in Australia's cultural awakening, but been central to the greatest part of it.

View all my reviews

IN WHICH OUR YOUNGEST CHILD WORRIES THE LIVING SHIT OUT OF US..... AGAIN

2011-10-19T06:51:00.001+08:00

We had a bit of extra money drop into the account this week, so it was decided, on the way home from work yesterday, to swing into the shop and pick up the Christmas layby. Yes, we had the kids with us, but that wouldn't be a worry-- the stuff you layby is always wrapped up in thick black plastic bags and is pretty damn unidentifiable.

Quick lesson: if you've forgotten that you've bought your daughter a hula-hoop, she's gonna notice when they bring it out. Unwrapped.

Bugger.

So we apologise to Erin, and ask her what she wants to do-- would she like it now, or would she like to wait until her birthday, knowing that it will be one of her presents?

Before she can reply, we get this from Connor:

"I know! What if we cut her head open, pull her brain out and replace it with another brain so that she doesn't remember?"

His sister's reply? "Ummmmm, I think I'll wait."

Connor. The problem solving animal.

SO IT BEGINS AGAIN

2011-10-16T13:46:00.004+08:00

The latest Writing the Science Fiction Short Story course begins tomorrow at the AWM Online Learning Centre.

Six weeks of my uninterrupted attention, advice, warm crumpets with lashings of butter and snug-as-a-bug-in-a-rugs at bed time.*

Get on it!

*Let's be honest. There are no crumpets and snug-inna-bugs. But there will be strippers, honest.**
** Let's be honest....

TREACHEROUS CARROTS: TANSY RAYNER ROBERTS

2011-10-16T13:36:00.000+08:00

Tansy Rayner Roberts is a phenom. Winner of the George Turner prize, author of the Creature Court trilogy (HarperCollins Voyager) and short story collection Love and Romanpunk (Twelfth Planet Press). Bloggerer at http://tansyrr.com and http://ripping-ozzie-reads.com/, Twitterer at @tansyrr, Galactic Suburbia podcaster, reviewerer of works at http://aussiespecficinfocus.wordpress.com/ and http://lastshortstory.livejournal.com/, AND she runs a doll craft business, makes fabric art, raises her two daughters and can type really fast, not to mention I'm pretty sure she's also a Doctor of something or other historical and she probably solves crimes in her spare time. Frankly, I think she died ten years ago and was replaced by a robot.

---

Far too often, writers get bogged down in the art vs. craft divide, as if those who prefer one term are automatically elitist geniuses, and the others are hard-working plebs. One lot wave their hands and expect their work to magically appear with a swish of their keyboard, while the others are so obsessed with wordcount that they wind up typing gobbledegook and extra gratuitous sex scenes or descriptive paragraphs just so they can hit their day's quota.

I know all these people. I have been all these people, at varying points in my career. Most writers have.

It does interest me, though, the hang ups so many of us have over one word or another - it's like that sticky divide between 'author' and 'writer'. We all have our own personal, occasionally quite emotional definitions of certain words that relate to our career. The words we embrace, the words we disassociate ourselves from with flappy hands, and the words we're totally not ready for yet. (at least in English we have the privilege of several words to describe people who write - in Swedish there's only one, which is most closely translated as 'author' so if you don't feel ready to hang that particular word around your own neck, you don't get a label at all)

I get very impatient with the idea of writing as Art, in the same way I get impatient with the idea of muses - too often it seems to suggest a romantic, film montage sort of life, where inspiration strikes, something moves THROUGH the writer who types manically for 24 hours and suddenly the work is done.

But that says more about my own preconceptions about Art in itself than it does about the (straw) writers who call themselves Artists, Darling. Do all novelists eye visual artists suspiciously and mutter about how long it takes to fill a canvas vs. how long it takes to produce a novel? Are we also affected by the film montage view of reality, where we think all it takes is flourishing a paint brush or squishing our hands into wet clay, and magically the work is done, sitting on plinths, being peered at by New York critics?

When I peel back the layers of assumptions that pop culture has apparently taught me about artists, and remember the people I actually know in reality who work as artists, or as craftspeople (or, just as commonly, both at once and more besides) I recall that art is in fact largely about using and utilising techniques. It's about practicing, and improving, and while there are elements involving inspiration and all that fancy stuff, there's also a lot of bloody hard work. So actually, there's not that much difference between art and craft at all, as a useful metaphor. Except maybe artists get paid more, while craftspeople get paid more often. But not always.

Likewise, it doesn't matter whether a writer (or an author) thinks of themselves as someone who produces art or craft. They're all just words, and writers know better than anyone that they can make words mean anything they want. We use them to trick ourselves into feeling better (or worse) about our work, into writing more (or not writing at all) and into feeling like the writer/artist/person we want to be. There are so many elements of a writing career that the writer themselves has no control over. But what we can control are our working methods, our goals, the techniques we work on to improve our art or craft or just plain writing, and the way we present ourselves to the world.

If we didn't have our little quirks, our pet metaphors and endless different methods of talking about ourselves, we'd probably dissolve into puddles of paranoia and panic about this unstable, rocky industry we have pinned our hopes on. We'd be no fun at dinner parties. We might never leave the house.

The kind of artist a writer most resembles is a con-artist. But trust me, that's a good thing.

TREACHEROUS CARROTS: STEPHEN DEDMAN

2011-10-09T08:28:00.000+08:00

Stephen Dedman has been just about everything in SF over the years: the author of excellent novels like The Art of Arrow Cutting and Shadows Bite, more than 120 short stories published in an eclectic range of magazines and anthologies, editor, magazine head honcho, bookshop owner, international man of mystery, and guru. He's also my very good friend, and was best man when I married Luscious Lyn. We get together nowhere near as often as we should, due to distance, but with new work constantly appearing (he's currently due to appear in Midnight Echo #6, Exotic Gothic 4 and Zombies versus Robots, and it's only Saturday...) he's always somewhere close in fictional form. He's always pretty damn close to the top of the list when I'm inviting people into writing ventures, and my League of Treacherous Carrots was no exception.

---

Ars gratia artis, pecunia gratia deus

I've lovedmuseums for as long as I can remember, but have spent relatively little time inart galleries. Tempt me with a few dinosaur skeletons, a moon rock, a mummycase, some suits of armour, experimental aircraft or even vintage cars, andI'll walk straight past a load of Pollocks without a second glance. It's notthat I don't respect visual artists (well, some of them, anyway); it's morethat many are communicating in a language that I have never made much of aneffort to learn.

That said, thereis one art gallery I visit whenever I'm in London; indeed, if I were pressedfor time, I would go there and skip the famous Museum of Natural History justdown the street. It's the Victoria & Albert, and quite apart from itsdelightfully high weirdness factor, much of it is devoted to design: artistryapplied to things that serve a purpose beyond adorning a wall or a courtyard.Things that work.

Whichconveniently brings me to the art in writing. The main thing I look for when Iwrite a scene, or a sentence, is whether or not it conveys the information Iwanted to communicate - i.e., whether or not it works. If not, I rewrite it until it does.

Of course, toneand style and pace also convey information, so I have to get those right, too.Sometimes I want to suggest beauty; sometimes horror; occasionally both atonce. Someone once said that prose should be like plate glass, not stainedglass, and sometimes that's true. Sometimes, however, I need coloured glass, orfrosted glass, or half-mirrored glass, or slow glass, or glass that's crackedand crazed so that it distorts the images, or glass so dirty you only get avague impression of the shape of whatever's outside. Or inside. Imagine, if youwill, that you've come around to collect the rent from an unreliable tenant, ayoung woman who sometimes calls herself Marie Jeanette though she was actuallyborn in Limerick and christened Mary Jane. The window of the room is filthy, asbefits her trade and the area. Spitalfields is a perfect name for it; if theretruly was a white chapel here, it would be so besmirched with soot and mud andobscene graffiti that not even God would know his own house. You knock on thedoor of Mary's room, but there is no answer. You do your best to peer throughthe grimy window, and discover that the pane is cracked and can easily bedislodged. You reach in, and push the threadbare curtain aside. What you see,sends you running to the police.

No-one aliveknows what sort of blade or blades Jack the Ripper used to mutilate Mary Kelly;one was at least six inches long, but must have been small enough to hide inthe clothing of the time - lethal, certainly, but probably cheap andcommonplace, deniable, furtive, sly. Now look at this display of katana fromthe V&A.

Try to see thisweapon through the eyes of the swordsmith who took pride in making itbeautiful, or the samurai who took equal pride in wearing and wielding it as anostentatious reminder of the prestige that only comes from generations of loyalservice to the emperor combined with the power to kill with utter impunity.Both blades can cut, both can slaughter, both are serviceable tools in thatsense, but they are not the same.

Words are thewriter's tools, and our language is blessed with many thousands of them, avocabulary so large as to dwarf even the V&A's wondrous hoard of strangeapparatus. When I want to tell a story, I have a choice of devices which I canuse in different combinations, but as Mark Twain once said, the differencebetween the right word and the almost right word, is like the differencebetween lightning and a lightning-bug. Some phrases guide you from A to B, stepby step; others transport you without giving you time to catch your breath.Some are subtle and simple as a Zen garden, some as big and brash and boastfulas elephant armour. Some of them reshape landscapes, interior or exterior Someof them frighten, or wound, or caress, or tickle. .

And sometimes,it may suit the writer's purpose to distract you by playing music on a pipeorgan shaped like a tiger eating an Englishman.

TREACHEROUS CARROTS: ADAM BROWNE

2011-10-04T23:04:00.000+08:00

When I decided I was going to invite other authors to speculate on the nature of writing as Art, Adam Browne was the first person I asked. Indeed, it was the thought of what he might say that prompted my initial desire to spread the question around. When it comes to writing as art, no other author of my acquaintance writes with quite the same combination of style, artistic intent, and outright froodiness. If you've read his work, you know exactly what I mean-- stories like the Bangkok-as-you've-never-imagined-it Heart of Saturday Night, or the Aurealis Award-winning The Weatherboard Spaceship, or Neverland Blues (Michael Jackson has evolved into an immortal spaceship, and needs a boy to, uh, enter him...) ......Once read, they can never be forgotten. Adam is that rare kind of artist, whose works can genuinely change the way you see the universe. If his novel makes the final leap from hopeful to actual Angry Robot publication, placed as it is in the same editorial lottery queue as mine own, then a much wider audience than ever before is going to know what we Browneaphiles have already discovered: he is one hell of a singular talent.

---

I once heard a painter say, I think it was in The Shock of the New, that the urge to paint is the urge to matchthe beauty of flowers. He said it’s clear we’ll never come close. Maybe we justdon’t have flowers in us. Or if we do, they’re bursts of artillery fire, or thequestionable blossom of an earmouse, or an efflorescence of leveraged buyouts branchingthrough the ramifying layers of Sony or Safeway or MGM.

As for representation,I say the Impressionists were closest to getting it right. They represented aflower by not representing it. The same principle works for writing. So manyideas and experiences don’t survive direct contact with words. A friend oncesaid that I work by surrounding an idea with literary ornament - I make Fabergeeggs, he said: the fragile shell is scarcely touched, but it’s there for thereader nevertheless (we’re told show,don’t tell; sometimes, though, it’s best not to show at all).

But is all this what Iset out to say? I don’t know. Whatever it is I’m trying to say, maybe I’mtrying to surround it, orbit in on the flower inside the egg without evertouching i

I know I want to say thatI love art. High art and dirty art. The beautiful and the grotesque, far moreclosely related to each other than the merely pretty or tasteful.

What else do I love?

The merry hideousness of a rundown circus.

The feeling that theacrobats and clowns, no matter how they try to glitz up their acts, belong tosomething as old as the tarot deck.

Brittle circus merriment, I love that. A bitalarming, like the manicbehaviour of someone teetering on the shivery edge of something terrible…

The sacred and the profane… Profound nonsense… The courageous coward inHuysmans’ Against Nature… Fellinitelling Nino Rota to compose a carnival tune that’s sad and happy at once… AndRota getting it right…

Lies that tell truths…

That’s what I’m trying to find, always. That’sart…

What don’t I love? What’s not art?

I’m unmoved by the feats of athletes andbusinesspeople whose supposed greatness comes from measuring themselves againstthe achievements of others.

Measure yourself against bigger things, that’swhat I say - against the world, the universe - people are afraid that doing itwill make them smaller, but it doesn’t, it makes them bigger.

The anxiety that crackles around me whenever Iwrite, I dislike that. That’s not art (not anti-art, which is Dada, which isart). It’s the unvoiced voice of I don’t know who telling me I’ve wasted mylife pursuing this thing.

Here I am, struggling for money, in dodgyhealth, fabulously obscure - and still I keep doing it, hopelessly… Wile E.Coyote, super genius… How many times have I plummeted, whistling, into thecanyon this year?

But still I keep going after it, theRoadrunner, the flower inside the egg; because what’s the point of a goal thatcan easily be achieved?

That’s what I tell the anxiety, that’s how Isilence the world that loves athletes and money. And I keep on writing…

The carrot will always be there. The classic target-that-can-never-be-reached,always ahead, drawing me on, mulishly.

I’ll never reach it, and that’s the way it’smeant to be. That’s art…

TREACHEROUS CARROTS: LAURA GOODIN

2011-10-01T12:18:00.000+08:00

Laura Goodin is a jet pilot.

Let me explain: I met Laura when I tutored Clarion South back in 2007. One of my major rants was on the difference between artistic styles. There are two types, I pontificated-- bus drivers, who always stick to the speed limit, never risk anything, but can be trusted to trundle from spot to spot on a timetable, safely, slowly, and allowing you to concentrate on other things all the while. And there are jet pilots, who may crash every now and then, but make us all look up and shout 'oooh' and 'aaah' as they streak past in their supersonic, supercool, brightly coloured sensawundazoommachines.

Laura, a transplanted Amerkan living in New South Wales, takes risks and makes us go 'ooh'. So far she's done it in markets like Wet Ink, Adbusters, ASIM, and The Lifted Brow. She'll also do it soon in Daily Science Fiction and Michael Moorcock's New Worlds, a sale that makes me shiver with unrepentant, blood-spitting jealousy. She's had plays produced here and in the UK,. and her poetry has been set for performance internationally. All this and she's pursuing a PhD at the University of Western Australia. Frankly, I'm a little concerned that she may have given up valuable sleep time to compose her post for me.

---

The point comes up with depressing regularity:  "No, you must create for yourself!  Not for an audience!  Banish all though of the audience from your mind!"  The idea seems to be that if you create for an audience, you are, by definition, trying to please them.  I would like to assert that the only true art is exactly that created for an audience.

Before you dismiss me as being either an attention-hungry crawler or a money-grubbing hack, let me elaborate.  I believe a crucial distinction must be made between writing to please an audience and writing to reach them.  If I have something I desperately want people to know, to care about, of course I'm going to write (my art is writing) in such a way as to make that message as clear and effective as possible.  This requires that I think long and hard, with love and with daring, about the best way to say it so that my audience will understand.  This is a very far cry from fawning on them!  Chances are quite good they won't thank me, particularly if the message is an uncomfortable one.  But my art demands that I try.

If I'm writing with literally no thought to anyone else in the world, and no-one will ever see the piece except me, you could say that that's art for an audience of one, still created out of love and daring.  In contrast, if I'm writing to lash out at my audience, make them feel shame, make myself feel better at their expense; no matter how skillful I am, that's not art.  And if I'm writing to manipulate them into giving me their money or their approval, because that's what I crave, that's not art.

In his truly excellent address given at the Boston Conservatory, Karl Paulnack makes a distinction between being an entertainer and being an artist.  He says, quite unabashedly, "Frankly, ladies and gentlemen, I expect you not only to master music; I expect you to save the planet."  His practice has led him to realize that art is serious business for all of us, audience and artist alike, and everything depends on it.

A work of art, true art, reminds us of the best that's in us, and calls us to claim it: "Remember what you are, O human being:  glorious in power, magnificent, brave, kind, wise, beautiful, and very, very good.  Remember."

When any woman, any man, any child experiences art and becomes thereby more truly themselves, the world is healed just a little bit.  Artists have a wonderful and terrible job, the best job ever, the scariest job ever:  healing the world.  And that's why true art demands an audience, and why the world demands true art.

TREACHEROUS CARROTS: DEB BIANCOTTI

2011-09-28T19:07:00.000+08:00

Deb Biancotti is one of my buds, ever since her brilliant story King of All and the Metal Sentinel beat out my own entry to win the 2003 Ditmar for Best Short Story. Any con we're both at will find us propped up at the bar, swapping war stories and mocking the world, something we've been able to do on far too few occasions over the years since she insists on living on the wrong, Eastern, side of the country. She's also won a couple of Aurealis awards along the way. Her collection A Book of Endings was shortlisted for the William L. Crawford Award for Best First Fantasy Book. She's now working on her first and second novels. Her story suite Bad Power is being published by Twelfth Planet Press, and her first novella will appear in Gilgamesh Press's Ishtar later this year. She likes cake. And being brilliant, although she'll only admit to the cake.

---

The warrior and the artist live by the same code of necessity, which dictates that the battle must be fought anew every day. -- Steven Pressfield, The War of Art

You don't have to be an artist, that's the thing. You can go to work, come home, fix a meal, drink a beer, rumble with the kids (if you have 'em) or the pets (if you have 'em) or your partner(s) (if you have 'em). But. You don't have to be an artist.

You don't even have to be an artist if you're a writer. You can write for money. Then you can go to the kitchen, fix a meal, drink a beer, rumble with the kids … I think you see where this is going.

I have to pause and admit I admire the bunch of you who have made the decision to either a) work or b) write for money. No, really, I know you want to think I'm being sarcastic. But I have a deep admiration for people who can find motivation for or satisfaction with things that actually MAKE MONEY. It fixes so many problems if you can like what you do to-make-money. And it makes sense. Why serve two masters? Do one thing, dedicate yourself to it, make money to raise your kids and pay for your beer. But, either way. You don't have to be an artist.

An artist does not necessarily do the thing they do for money. By which I mean: an artist may indeed MAKE money from the thing they do. But that's not why they do it. They may work in paint or paper or plastic or digitalia or words or – oh, words. They may be a writer. But what they do, they would still do even if they weren't making money. They may do it less frequently, they may do it for a foreshortened part of their day. (Because, after all, there's the thing they do for money, and then the going home, fixing the kids, rumbling with the beer, having a … whatsit.) But when they work with their medium – their paint or their words or their 'found items' or their glue, or what have you – they are fitting that INTO a day that may, already, have the work and the beer-kids and rumble-meals.

Some artists will not make money, of course, and they will keep making their art anyhow. I mean, that's up to them. I heard once that Cormac McCarthy was so broke he couldn't afford toothpaste. So when a free sample of toothpaste turned up in his letterbox, he figured he'd keep writing. Instead of making money. Do I admire that? You know, I actually think it points to a flaw in the personality. Seriously, you can't afford TOOTHPASTE? Get a freaking job, dude, what is your problem?

Anyhow, those artists have made their choices. They can make great books with or without toothpaste. I mean, you wouldn't want to hang out with them over beers (first of all, because you'd be the one paying – and also because, whoa, their breath would smell super-bad). But what unites all artists – canvas or paper or word or metal or wood or words, or words – is that motivation to keep doing it not for the money, not because it's easy, not for any other reason except one word: “because”.

Because they feel the story in the words or the sculpture in the marble or the *thing* that comes up from inside. Because an artist “must”. While a non-artist simply “can”.

For me, wellbehaved books with neat plots and worked-out endings seem somewhat quaint in the face of the largely incoherant reality of modern life; and then again fiction, at least as I write it and think of it, is a kind of religious meditation in which language is the final enlightenment, and it is language, in its beauty, its ambiguity and its shifting textures, that drives my work. -- Don DeLillo

40 IS THE NEW 2 MULTIPLIED BY 20

2011-09-24T11:50:00.000+08:00

A huge call out to the immortal Seanie-- master of puppets, angry young man, bon vivant, legend, and best of friends-- as he puts 40 years of bolshie misbehaviour behind him and joins the rest of us in looking like the result of a zoo project to breed an endangered species of Robbie Coltrane.

Here's to the times, dude. May they continue long into the night.

We were Gods once, and young.... oh, we really were....

A SMALL FOUND POEM USING THE LAST FEW SEARCH ITEMS THAT LED PEOPLE TO MY BLOG

2011-09-24T09:07:00.000+08:00

Carrot
Carrots
Battersblog
Pastanaga
Do be do be do ba do be, do ba do be
Carrot with a face

Ohhhhhhhhhh yeah, babeeeeeee.

TREACHEROUS CARROTS: DIRK FLINTHART

2011-09-24T08:38:00.000+08:00

Dirk Flinthart is as close to a polymath as anybody I know. I first met him over a bottle of wine at a room party at a con in Canberra five years ago, where his first act was to subject me to a rib-cracking bear-hug that lifted me off my feet. and let's be honest, folks, I ain't no bantamweight.... He's been one of my favourites ever since. Right now, in his own words, he's currently at work on a Masters Degree, two novels, five short stories, a heroic poem, a libretto, his 2nd dan in Ju-jitsu, a black belt in Iaido, three children, a cantankerous wife, fifty rebellious acres of Tasmanian countryside, and a bunch of other things even less relevant to the question of Art. He's written for quite a range of publications now, and has the distinction of being the most-nominated non-winner of all time at the Aurealis Awards (at least, so says Wikipedia. Dirk can't confirm the claim, but does find the idea amusing as hell.) as well as sharing a Ditmar with Margo Lanagan. He says he'd like to be a writer, but his life is complicated with children and... stuff. But when Dirk does stuff, he does stuff very well indeed. A fiery intellect, a stunning turn of phrase, and ideas that fly off the page with careless abandon-- all Flinthart signatures, and all present in the article that follows.

---

I’m here by invitation. Lee gives me credit for having an interest in the art side of writing. I think that’s very kind of him, but I’m not sure I’ve ever really considered it in that light.

There’s an old division in the ranks of SF writers. The critics used to talk about ‘stylists’ versus ‘storytellers’. Your man Ray Bradbury, now: he’s the archetype of the stylist. Some of his short work is constructed out of next to nothing, but when he’s on song, his writing is so gorgeously evocative that even a story in which nothing much happens and nobody does anything about it becomes a thing of beauty.

The flipside is the storyteller: the writer whose work is focused on conflict and resolution, plot and action. Want an example? Isaac Asimov is a good choice. His writing style is pretty minimal. If ‘Nightfall’ was submitted today, it would be rejected out of hand, because the language is clunky, the story is overlong, the character names are painful, the characterisation is perfunctory, and there are plot holes big enough to hide a starship. But ‘Nightfall’ has been voted the most popular story of all time - more than once, if I recall - and the wonder of the idea itself sells the story even now.

I’m a storyteller. I’d like to be more of a stylist, but I have to work hard at it. On the other hand, my love of stories and storytelling goes back farther than I can remember. I tell stories. That’s who I am.

This is what drives me. I’m not consciously setting out to create Art. I just like stories. I literally get goosebumps when a nifty idea occurs to me. When I’m trying to work through the details of something interesting, trying to make it come out in a way that says what I think it needs to say, I’ve been known to stop driving the car and sit by the side of the road, staring vacantly into the middle distance until everything sorts itself out. That’s what storytelling does to me.

Art, though. What the hell is that about?

For me, art’s a changeable, mutable thing. When I was a kid of eight, Doc Smith’s “Lensman” novels were the coolest things I’d ever read. They grabbed my head and filled it with wild, wonderful possibilities. They gave me fantastic new dreams. What more can you ask of Art?

I can’t read Doc Smith these days. I’m all too aware of the limitations of his writing style, and I’m uncomfortable with the politics of his work, and his depiction of gender, and with the simplistic good/evil dichotomy he presents. It’s not Art to me any more.

Does that mean it never was?

I read Joyce’s ‘Ulysses’ a couple years ago, on the grounds that a writer ought to be versed in the classic works. I’m pleased I can say I’ve read the book, but I didn’t enjoy it. I found it tedious, self-indulgent, and overlarded with intellectual in-jokery of the sort that makes me regret that Hitler didn’t include Post-Modernists on his list of things to do. Despite that, I recognise that the book is expertly, densely written, and its recursive, often self-referential structure definitively laid the groundwork for the English novel to become something far more wonderful and challenging than the nineteenth-century inheritance with which Joyce was working. Kudos to the man: the book is Art.

But it’s not my art at all.

My favourite novel is ‘The Master And Margharita’, by Mikhail Bulgakov. It was written in the mid-thirties in Soviet Russia, and smuggled out for publication. I admire the work because it includes every element that I want in a book: a delightful, engaging story full of clever ideas; vivid, interesting characters; powerful social commentary and strong, thought-provoking philosophy and politics; and a wicked, lovely sense of humour. Though I can’t read it in the original Russian, I’ve read three different translations, and I strongly suspect that the Bulgakov’s language also carries that element of vision and poetry that gives the best works their special shine.

So where am I going with this? It’s simple, really. I don’t aspire to Art. I write stories because if I didn’t, I’d be telling them in other ways. I do that anyway - the shared webcomic I do with my eldest son, simply for the fun of it; the anecdotes at dinner and parties; the blog; my letters and emails, etc. I can’t walk away from storytelling, so it makes sense to try and do it well, I figure.

Do it well. That’s the real challenge. I’ve outgrown simplistic fiction. I would never argue it doesn’t have a place — clearly, Matthew Reilly and Dan Brown are making people happy! — but it’s not my place any more. Therefore, when I create a story, I try to create a story that I’d enjoy reading, which means a certain density, texture, depth, and complexity as well as ideas and action. I don’t always succeed, but that’s okay: rejection letters are useful learning tools.

Is this Art? I write these stories to pose questions to myself, and to frame certain ideas that make me feel strongly. I work at the structure of the piece until it says what I need it to say, and then I carve away everything I can find that doesn’t say it, and hopefully, I’m left with something that carries feeling and meaning, but remains interesting and entertaining to read. Doing that: yes, I suppose it’s an art. Certainly, I get a lot of satisfaction out of a story which comes out right.

Does that make it Art from your viewpoint? I don’t know. Maybe. If the story catches you unawares, cracks your head open, makes you think in a new and different way or helps you uncover an understanding you couldn’t articulate for yourself, it’s probably art. But I wouldn’t know. Once it leaves my hands, I have no control over what it does any more. Beyond that point, it belongs to the reader.

And that’s the dangerous part, right there. Because everyone brings their own baggage to this Art thing, you understand. We look at the famous cave paintings of southern France, and we see beautiful, articulate, energetic, virile depictions of long-gone beasts, and if we happen to be Picasso, we say “Ahh. We have learned nothing!” Yet we really have no idea what that long-dead artist intended. For all we know, those paintings are insulting graffiti, or blasphemous images scrawled in defiance of some neolithic church. We can guess; but ultimately, we have no context, no certainty, and therefore any ‘meaning’ we read into those images comes from ourselves.

This is the paradox which reveals the ultimate ugliness of the Censor. When Kevin Rudd dismisses any possibility of artistic value in photographs of a nude teenager, he’s telling you about himself, not about the photo. He’s telling you that he can’t look at such images without finding something abhorrent in himself, and his own response — and he is assuming that you must be as perverse and weak-minded as he. When Fred Nile starts a crusade against Serrano’s “Piss Christ”, he’s telling you nothing about the work. Instead, he’s telling you that he’s terrified of the thought that just maybe all the stories about his beloved God really are just a bunch of stories, and he’s desperate to prevent you having the same idea.

All of this leads me to my final point. I don’t know if what I do is Art. I’ll never know. That’s all right by me. I do this because it’s who I am, not because I want to be remembered. I don’t even really know what Art-with-a-capital-A is, because it seems to me that it’s always personal, and depends as much on the audience as on any artist. But I do know that art is important, because it demands thought. It uncovers new ideas, and drags old ones out into the light where they can be examined properly. Art provokes questions: often very uncomfortable questions.

And that is exactly as it should be. Because of course, censorship is the diametric opposite of Art, and therefore if we do not have Art, we as a people are forced to live inside the timidity, the narrow-mindedness, and the prurient perversity of Rudd, Nile, and the rest of the censors.

I don’t know about you, but I’d rather be dead.

- Show quoted text -

TREACHEROUS CARROTS: KAREN MILLER

2011-09-21T14:06:00.001+08:00

Karen Miller is in serious danger of contracting word poisoning. She's been writing professionally since 2005, and since the publication of her first fantasy novel The Innocent Mage has written 17 novels. They cover epic historical fantasy, media tie-in work for Star Wars and Stargate SG-1, and the Rogue Agent fantasy series under her pen name K E Mills: there's simply too much Karen for one name, and not even in a He's-Fred-but-on-Friday-nights-calls-himself-Jessica kind of way. Her work has been short-listed for both the James Tiptree Jr award and the Aurealis Award, so you know she's damn good at what she does. When she’s not busy at the computer, Karen enjoys acting and directing at her local theatre company. Before she realised her dream of becoming a professional writer, she studied for and was awarded a Bachelor of Arts (Communications) degree and a Master of Arts in Children’s Literature, and worked in a wide variety of jobs, including: horse groom, college lecturer, PR officer in local government, publishing assistant, and owned a specialist science fiction, fantasy and mystery book shop. She's one of the people I seek out to sit next to at cons: literate, intelligent, bawdy and always, always thinking, not to mention unfailingly kind: my first serious contact with an agent was because Karen bumped into her at an airport and thought she'd be a good fit for me. Karen's website and LJ are always highly readable, and so is the article that follows.

To be honest, this one’s got my head in a bit of a tailspin. And as a result it may well be that what I’m about to say is going to ruffle feelings, which isn’t my intention. But it is what it is … so …

I am not comfortable with the notion of framing myself as an artist. And I’m not comfortable with the idea of seeing myself as someone who has important things to say, whose purpose is to enlighten the reading public with the brilliance of my insights about … whatever. I don’t think it’s my place. I don’t think it’s my job. I think the audience, the reading public, gets to decide what is or isn’t important about my work, or works of literature in general.

First and foremost, I see myself as an entertainer. A yarnspinner, a storyteller, someone who’s been blessed with the gift of the gab.

Does that mean I don’t have opinions, thoughts, feelings, about a whole range of subjects? Hell, no. I’m about as opinionated as they come. I have more opinions than I know what to do with. But should I use my fiction as a vehicle to parade my various thoughts and opinions?

No. I don’t think I should. Because as a novelist, a writer of fiction, I believe I’m making a promise to the reader who picks up my book … and that’s not the same promise as would exist if I’d written a work of non-fiction, or autobiography.

And I say that being fully aware of the fact that a writer’s life experience informs all aspect of the writing, that we all proceed using a road map of conscious and unconscious assumptions, beliefs, prejudices, points of view and perspectives. For example, one reason why I write fantasy is because I really do believe in the concept of good and evil. I believe that power can corrupt. That greed is poisonous. That weak people do terrible things to compensate for their failings. That good people can make a difference in a sometimes dark and dangerous world. And I think there is a style of fantasy fiction that allows me to explore those beliefs. So as far as it goes, yes, it’s true. My opinions are informing my fiction.

But I also think there’s a fine line that writers walk , a line that when crossed leads us into writing thinly-veiled polemics, into riding our personal hobbyhorses into the realms of non-fictional lecturing. And when we do that, I think we’ve let down the readers. I think when a reader walks into a bookshop and starts browsing the fiction shelves, they’re looking for a great story. Yes, they might also be looking for a story that makes them think, gives them a chance to see the world in a different light, to reconsider their world viewpoint. All of that. But mainly, I think they’re looking for great entertainment.

That’s why I’m wary of falling into what I think is the trap of defining my own work. I don’t think it’s up to me to decide that I’m writing something ‘special’ or ‘important’ or ‘socially relevant’. I’m afraid the minute I start thinking that way, I’m going to lose my connection to the reader. I’m going to cross the line from entertainer to pontificator. Most fatally of all, I’m afraid I’m going to start thinking of myself as superior to my readers, that my purpose is to point out to them all the ills of the world that I understand so much better than they do, and that their purpose is to receive my wisdom with awe and gratitude.

So how do I, as a writer, try to walk that fine line? To keep my focus on reader engagement, and not reader enlightenment? Thinking about it, I’ve come to this conclusion. I think that if I start a story from a place of polemics: I believe that unbridled capitalism is evil and I’m going to write a story showing that, then chances are my story isn’t going to please a lot of readers, because my primary purpose for writing isn’t to connect with them and entertain them with a rattling good yarn, it’s to lecture them and prove my point.

On the other hand, if I happen to think that unbridled capitalism is evil, but can explore that idea as I investigate the lives of a cast of characters in an engaging way, then I can make my point effectively and subtly, while never making that point more important than the needs of the reader … which is, more often than not, to be entertained.

There’s an argument that gets made that says not to address matters of social importance in fiction is to support the status quo, to give tacit approval to the ills of the world. There are writers who rail against the complacency of audiences who only read so they can have their narrow views of the world comfortably confirmed. There are people who feel that writers have some kind of obligation to challenge the status quo, to shake the tree, to rock the boat.

My feeling is that while there’s merit to that argument, at the end of the day it’s not what you say, it’s the way you say it. If we let ourselves become strident and condescending, if we’re so busy shaking our fists and stamping our feet and demanding that people pay attention to what we’re saying because we’re artists – and by implication better and special – that we forget about the person who picked up our book in the first place, and why they picked it up, then I think we’ll most likely lose any chance we have of making a connection that will let us ask questions and challenge preconceptions and encourage people to see the world through different eyes for a while.

Let the readers decide if the books I’ve written are art. My job, I think, is to do my best to see they’ve not wasted their money.

CALL AND RESPONSE

2011-09-19T17:43:00.002+08:00

Catches six year old son pretending to measure things with his father's tape measure...

ME: Give that to me. I've told you that's not a toy.
CONNOR: I'm not doing this for fun!

Where the hell do I go with that?

TREACHEROUS CARROTS: JASON FISCHER

2011-09-18T08:48:00.000+08:00

What to say about the inimitable Jasoni? I met him during my tutor week at Clarion South back in 2007, and it was love at first sight. He submitted a story that was incendiary, rippling with invention and word play and the sort of internal logic that marks out the very best talents. It was also a play-by-play retelling of Frankenstein. And when I took it apart, piece by piece, and whipped his back with the shards, he took it with humility and much note-taking, and has never looked back since. Later that day, Lyn took him food shopping, where he presented her with a shopping list consisting solely of the words "Pies and pasties and sausage rolls and shot." Clearly, this is a man who does not think like others, but then, this is the man who has gifted us (and I do mean gifted) with stories like Undead Camels Ate Their Flesh, for want of a jesusman, and The House of Nameless. he is a special talent. He lives in Adelaide with his lovely wife Kate and their little boy, and is a shameless punner of the punniest puns in Punnington. You can also find him at http://jasonfischer.com.au/

---

The first thing most folks say when asked to quantify or measure art is the hoary chestnut: "art is subjective" thing. This is true. This is also a cop-out :) Of course, we all see a piece of artwork differently, and that's kind of the point. The muse's feather, brushing against someone's hind-brain, inspiration then spat out through an imperfect medium and absorbed into another brain, via their own life experiences, their own wiring. If the travel of an art-form from creation to consumption were mapped like a circuit board, it would be the most wasteful circuit ever, losing power and capacity at every turn.

Despite this rather frustrating truth, art is awesome. Couldn't live in a world without it. The creative squeezings of the human brain are, quite possibly, right up there on the apex of human achievement, but more importantly, art is our humanity at its purest, its most important. It's the way we see ourselves, offered up in a heady mixture of truth and bullshit. Beads and mirrors for the human race, offered up by the muses, shiny pretties that, on the face of things, don't amount to much. Does an artist build bridges, farm crops, heal the sick?

If an alien intelligence were to gauge the value of human occupations, I've got the feeling that our skillsets would come pretty low on the list. Can't use a sonnet to unclog a dunny, a marble frieze can't feed anyone, and you sure as hell can't deliver a baby with a string quartet. But all of these things are WORTHY. Because art brings resonance to our existence, and again, holds up the mirror to humanity.

When thinking of the writer as the artist, I would argue (with some bias) that we are the best sort of artists. For we are the bullshit artists. In no other medium does the creator get such leeway, such a scope of opportunity. We're not bound into the forms and modes of a visual medium, and don't have to operate to the rules (or lack thereof) of music. We scribblers get the chance to connect directly with someone else's brain, and I'd even daresay that our medium has the least loss of power in the Muse-Creator-Consumer circuit.

That's not to say that writing isn't without its own modes and restrictions, but we writing folk can perhaps more easily bypass these. It's oh-so-easy to just let the writing mind slip its gears, and since the ascendancy of literature, abstract art has never been easier for humanity to reach. In genre writing for example, there's some amazing stuff in the slipstream genres, a true marriage of the fantastic and the impractical. But damn, when someone gets it right, it keeps me interested, in ways that dragons and moon-rockets and vampires stopped doing several years ago.

When writers give themselves permission to fail and dance about on tall ledges, the results can be glorious. Again, in the scope of genre writing, where suspension of disbelief is much more central to most of these premises, upping the ante becomes that much more difficult to pull off. In Lee's own parlance, no-one remembers the bus drivers of fiction, but everyone remembers the fighter pilots, the guerrillas and the rebels.

We're also the most frequently imprisoned brand of artist, but it's not always the journalists and social commentators who end up behind bars or punished in courts of law. Song-writers, novelists, poets, comic writers and playwrights. The dude who writes an inflammatory statement on a wall, probably even a jingle-writer or two somewhere along the line. Punished for creativity, for saying things that rock the boat.

So, all hail the bullshit artists, the dabblers in the abstract, guerrilla fighters in the war on literary mediocrity, on mediocrity full stop. When we writers get it right, when that imperfect circuit board operates at something near to full capacity, it's like the muse's feather gently brushes against both writer and reader, in an almost religious way. In fact, you could say that it's an Art Tickle of Faith.

In closing, writers may sometimes be arrested, but incorrigible punsters are usually lynched.

TREACHEROUS CARROTS GUEST POST: JASON NAHRUNG

2011-09-14T17:47:00.000+08:00

Jason Nahrung is one of the most stylish fellows I've ever met, both in person (he has the best shirts ever), and in his writing. It's always a massive pleasure every time we cross paths, and I couldn't have wanted a more fitting and pleasurable person to present me with my Aurealis Award. Jason is everything I'm not: cool, laid back, laconic, and able to look good in black. He grew up on a Queensland cattle property and now lives in Melbourne with his wife, the writer Kirstyn McDermott, who will be joining us a bit later. His stories are invariably darkly themed, perhaps reflecting his passion for classic B-grade horror films and ’80s goth rock. You can learn more about him at www.jasonnahrung.com but we've got him for the next few minutes, so sit down and listen, all right?

'I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again.'

It's a quote from Oscar Wilde that has seen other iterations. If it makes you laugh, or grimace, or perhaps do both, then chances are you're a writer.

Watching the statistics for the burgeoning self-published e-book market, I can't help but wonder how many of these literary entrepreneurs have spent the day staring at their work seeing no symbols other than a dollar sign. In the rush to make a buck out of the new frontier, where the only gatekeeper is a bank account and access to a print-on-demand facility, is the focus on the art and craft of writing being lost?

It isn't just an issue for self-publishing, of course. Those two aspects of writing -- the art and the craft upon which it is based -- have always sat uneasily side by side, dissing each other with genre aspersions, digging each other in the ribs with sales figures and literary awards. Legacy publishers are guilty of making available poorly edited, structurally unsound and otherwise poorly executed stories; copy editing is the most visible victim of decreasing investment in the finished product.

The situation is made even murkier by the general low regard for writers, and writing, within society. You published a book? You must be rich, now. You wrote a book? Wow, how hard can it be, then -- Publish it yaself, didya? You wrote a book? You must be a snob, a geek, a layabout. No ticker-tape parade for you!

Arguably, of all the arts, writing is the one most accessible: the material requirements are low and the perception is that, to practise it, the skill set amounts to being able to hold a pen, or type, even one-fingered will do. We all have a story in us, we're told; the understanding follows that we are all equally capable of telling that story through the written word. After all, most people in the western world write every day. They learnt it at school. How hard can it be? Yeah, I've always thought I'd knock out a book one day, when I get a spare moment ...

Indeed, the craft can be learnt. Here's a noun, here's a verb; here's where the commas go. Talk to anyone who's read a slush pile, and you'll hear how even those most basic of grammatical instructions can prove mysterious. Almost as mysterious as the professed writer who declares they do not read, or read only their favourite author, or read only one genre. I'm not feeling the love, there.

Which leads me to the art. I don't consider myself to be particularly artful when it comes to stringing my words together. I don't consider that I'm a great stylist. I'm aware of gaps in my literary education. But I love my words. I love changing them around to see what difference it makes. I love taking out the comma, and putting it back in again. I am, I think, a proficient craftsman -- a wordsmith, if you will. But an artist? Hm. Grey areas and accusations of snobbery abound.

I'm not sure the art can be taught, although I suspect a voracious reading appetite matched to critical awareness is part of it; so, too, an ear for nuance and rhythm; a degree of pedantry might also help. Passion not just for storytelling but forlanguage: most definitely. No, I'm really not sure that these things -- this innate, even arcane, talent for using the right words in the right order -- can be taught.

It's the coming together of art and craft that makes a good book into a great book, and there's no formula for it. It can't be mechanised. It can't be measured in sales figures, either. A technically sufficient, artfully deficient story can tap the zeitgeist and go gangbusters. The artist's sculpted vision may languish. Go figure.

Of course, not all writers want to be artists -- as long as their story is out there, they're happy -- and among those who don't, money isn't the only driving force. We write, and we seek publication -- to have our stories made available to an audience, through whatever channel -- for myriad reasons. Financial and critical success will fall where it will: that's the mystique of the publishing world, the lottery element that stokes the desire of so many aspirants. Accepting our limitations and shaping our aspirations accordingly makes good sense, to me.

The thing is, regardless of what we want from our writing, the vocation deserves respect: if not from the broader community, at least from its practitioners. That respect begins with acknowledging the craft: learning the tools and the materials, finding a voice, making the finished product as good as it can be. Writing is not just the fallback position for those who can neither play a musical instrument nor paint; it is unlikely to be the best paying job you can do in your pyjamas.

Maybe it's in the commas that the benchmark of the writer lies. If you're a writer, the commas matter.

THE AWM ONLINE COURSE COMES BACK ATCHA

2011-09-14T17:40:00.000+08:00

Enrolments are now open for the Australian Writers Marketplace Online Learning Centre's October intake of my 6 week Writing The SF Short Story Course.

The July intakes rocked the granny's panties, and were full of vibrant, passionate, and altogether excellent commentary, opinions, analysis and most importantly, stories.

If you want my undivided attention for six whole weeks, and a guaranteed half a dozen solid gold stories that will make your fortune and turn you into the world famous Rock & Roll Tyrannosaurus Sex God of Speculative Fiction * you always knew you really were deep down inside, then knock on over to the AWM Online site and enrol now.

I guarantee you'll feel better for it.**

*Actual Rock & Roll Tyrannosaurus Sex God status not included. Some things you just have to work at.

** No genuine feelings of.... actually, no, I do guarantee you'll feel better for it. If you can't feel better after immersing yourself in being a writer for 6 weeks, you're probably not a writer to begin with.

GUEST BLOGGING GOES TWO WAYS

2011-09-14T17:32:00.000+08:00

It's spring, and a young genre's mind turns to many things: producing baby books, the glint in the eye of a particularly alluring anthology, popping in and out of each others blogs and.... well, blogging.

Over at the Fablecroft Publishing blog, Tehani Wessely has invited a bunch of established Australian authors to comment on their interactions and personal history with the indie press, and my offering has now been posted.

Surprisingly, I get a bit ranty. Who'd have thunk it?

You can read the ongoing series here, and it's genuinely fascinating stuff. Go, read, enjoy.

TREACHEROUS CARROTS GUEST BLOG: THORAIYA DYER

2011-09-12T21:49:00.004+08:00

In the wake of my ranty ranty art post, I thought it might be interesting to ask some of my more artistically inclined peers-- writers whose art I admire, and/or whose approach and way of thinking has inspired my own thought processes-- to give us their views on the writer as artist.

First to join us is the lovely Thoraiya Dyer. I first came into contact with Thoraiya when she emailed me to ask some searching and incisive questions regarding the Aboriginal spirituality portrayed in one of my stories, and to discuss her misgivings about the difficulty in portraying that spirituality in one of her own works. That story, Night Heron's Curse, published in ASIM, is frikkin' fabulous, and was shortlisted for the Aurealis Award in 2008, proving beyond all doubt that she has no need to ask the likes of me for advice about anything. Since then, over a dozen of her short stories have appeared in such places as Cosmos, Aurealis and Zahir. her novelette The Company Articles of Edward Teach was winner of the 2011 Ditmar Award for best Novella/Novelette, and Thorayia was awarded Best New Talent in the same year, making us New Talent Buddies or something. Her urban fantasy short story Yowie, from the Locus-recommended Twelfth Planet Press anthology Sprawl, was joint winner of the Aurealis award for Best Fantasy Short Story of 2010. Twelfth Planet Press will publish a collection of her original fiction as part of their Twelve Planet Series in 2012.

I finally met her in person at this year's National SF Convention, and she is as lovely in person as she is in electronica. You can learn more about her at her website, but for the moment, if you would be so kind, I give you Thorayia Dyer:

There are all sorts of parallels between writers and visual artists, and it’s a fun way to explore my taste in books and in paintings. Why do I like what I like? How can I try to write things that other people will like?

My very favourite paintings meet three criteria.

First: I demand outstanding technique. I want to feel like the artist’s fingers have bled, that they have stayed up til dawn to master techniques that a novice couldn’t dream of.

I want to see the evidence in a painting’s composition, movement, colour, brushwork – anything! – that those facets have been studied, that they have been considered, that they have been deliberately applied, that it isn’t all just a happy accident like patterns of moonbeams or rain. Not only because the results are stunning, but because dedication to a skill makes me feel respect and awe for the artist and prepares me to absorb the message.

Second: The message. I want a topic or theme that challenges, moves, informs, or – yes! – even entertains me. As long as it incites some sort of memorable response.

The final criteria, tied in with the message, is the ability for me to understand that message, and here’s where the visual artist has a choice.

To communicate clearly with symbolism that most people will understand (paint a big gold halo around the head of that saint!) and risk being scorned by critics?

Or, to communicate, perhaps with more complexity and depth, with those who are students or lovers of art (the tree in Van Gogh’s Starry Night connects earth and sky; the element is repeated in the church steeple which connects people and heaven, the message is the beauty of nature as a facet of Creation), but to risk having the message missed by many or most people?

Written works follow the same pattern, really.

There are books that have clearly been written in an oblivious, rapturous way by authors who were struck by a good idea, but, even if they did read other books before they started writing, they did not think critically about what they read and how they might apply the techniques they encountered.

There are books that have great technique but no message; nothing to make me think profound thoughts or feel some powerful emotion.

There are books that have messages, but I don’t have the skill to decipher them. (I often like to call this “poetry”! When poetry is self-referencing, the meaning is lost on me because I haven’t read enough poetry, which makes me sad and also feel a bit stupid. But I did choose Veterinary Science and not English Lit.)

Then again, when a message is too transparent, I don’t like it either. I like to earn my supper, when I’m in the mood, and when I hear people complain about a science fiction story that they hated, but that I loved, it can be because familiarity allows me to decipher conventions that they don’t have the tools to decipher.

Sometimes being able to understand a dense literary novel makes me feel clever, and that’s rewarding; who doesn’t like to feel they are good at something they have practiced? The skill to do that is no different to the skill my husband has, which is to take mechanical gadgets apart for the pleasure of seeing how they work and then have the ability to appreciate and applaud some clever engineer’s innovative solution, while I’m staring at it and wondering exactly what it’s for.

Am I difficult to please? Yes, but so is everyone, and everyone has their own criteria, and all criteria are valid. Just because another person doesn’t care for technical excellence doesn’t mean that what they love isn’t art.

KISS MY ART, or, THE TREACHERY OF CARROTS

2011-09-11T15:28:00.000+08:00

I meant to post in the wake of my guest speech at the KSP SF Awards a few weeks back, and commit to blog those thoughts I had spoken in person. I've got a few minutes. Let's do it now.

For the last decade, I have been a writer. I've been writing a lot longer than that-- my first publication was back in 1989-- but for the last 10 years my writing has followed a discrete career arc, with ambitions and learnings completely separate to my day to day existence. I am a writer. I have never considered myself an author, and I delineate the difference thus: an author is one who publishes large works, and plays out their dramas as much in the public sphere as behind the desk-- think Rowlinson, James Clavell, Stephen King; a writer simply writes, and works to create art, and tries to build good fortune along the way without utilising ones self as part of the message. It's not a real solid definition, and it doesn't imply a value judgement to one side or the other, and frankly, you could pick holes in it for fun any time you like. But it works in my mind. However, there's one word in there that people seem to struggle with when I mention it in the same breath as writing, or speculative fiction, and that's art.

I'm not going to argue the relative merits of SF as a genre. You like it or you don't, and either is fine by me. I don't even consider myself an SF writer: I've written poetry, plays, film scripts, stand-up comedy routines, jokes, reviews, interviews, articles, educational courses, and sundry other forms along with SF. So no, I'm not going to argue over whether SF is any more or less worthy than poetry or lichrachoor or dirty limericks. But I will argue that writing is as much capital-a Art as sculpture, or painting, and what's more, I'll even define what type of art it is:

Writing is abstract art, and I can prove it.

Take a look at this picture.

I'll give a nice, yummy e-Freddo to anybody who can name this picture, without looking it up on the net, or asking an art historian friend.

Truth is, you cannot define this picture just by looking at it. It's non-representational. It doesn't look like anything, except for those subconscious links and images we ascribe to it from within our own experience. To you it might look like lit roads at night. To the person next to you it might resemble a micro-chip in action. That guy over there might see a cubist playing Pac-man. It's abstract art, designed to push past the immediate emotional responses of representational recognition ("It's a tree, I like trees, I have a nice memory associated with a tree, I am happy, I like this painting.") and strike emotional triggers from deeper within the viewer's subconsious.

And for the record, it's Broadway Boogie Woogie, by Piet Mondrian. Have a Freddo.

How is all this related to writing? Like this:

Let's pretend there are thirty of us in the room. If I hold up, say, a carrot:

Let's all pretend this is real, shall we?

Everyone in the room sees the same carrot. From different angles, perhaps, but still, the same carrot. Now, if I hold up a picture of a carrot:

Ceci n'est pas une pipe. Ou une carotte.

Again, whilst we aren't viewing an actual carrot, we're all looking at the same image, and the agreement that the image does, indeed, represent a carrot, would be implicit. However, let's now take a look at the word itself:

Carrot.

If I ask everyone in the room to draw the carrot they see when I hold up this word, what odds would you give that every image is exactly the same? What odds on any two of them being the same? What odds on even you and the person sitting next to you producing exactly the same image?

The word 'carrot' only signifies the orange, conical, stick-tasting root vegetable in question because we, as writers and readers, engage in an unspoken compact that this is what that particular arrangement of letters signifies. The word itself, and the letters that make it up, hold no meaning whatsoever outside those which we agree upon. Should any individual member of our little cadre stand up and say "That word does not mean carrot. It means Nose-emancipator", we have no moral right to tell them they are wrong, other than the fact that we have all agreed upon the word's meaning.

Cut a carrot up, boil it, mash it, whatever you like, and it remains, inherently, a carrot. Cut a picture of a carrot out of its frame, glue it to the Mona Lisa, cut it into strips and stick them around a door frame, and it remains, inherently, a picture of a carrot.

Cut the word 'carrot' into its separate letters and place them in a different order, or distribute them throughout different words, and the word 'carrot' disappears. Hell, turn one letter upside down, and the word disappears. An 'arrcot' is not orange, nor does it taste like a stick, even though it contains all the necessary letters. Unless we all agree upon it, and even then, we'd have to persuade everyone who speaks the language.

Meaning, agreed upon only because of the unwritten contract between artist and audience, eliciting an individual emotional response determined purely by the sum of experiences the viewer brings to the task of viewing the object. Abstract art, magnified by the fact that we, as writers, choose the order and weight we ascribe to each individual abstract element (Letter? Words? Punctuation? what are these things?)we use to create that emotional response.

How many of you, reading this post, heard my voice in your heads? How many heard your own?

Art is not comfort food. Art should never be comfort food. Great art does not reinforce that which we already hold to be true. It challenges the status quo. It undermines belief. It forces us to consider questions about ourself, and our perceived reality, and our place in the infrastructure of our society and culture, that we may never consider otherwise. Truly great art changes the viewer: the experience of viewing alters the audience, so that once the world is perceived in a particular way it can never be un-perceived. The audience, having come to this new state of mind, can never go back. The world is not the shape as it once was. The mind is not the same place it used to be.

Artists have a responsibility to change us because it is the nature of art to show us reality, not as we wish to close our eyes and see it, but as it could be, whether that be for good or bad. Artists look into the abyss and report back what they find. Writers are guerilla artists, because what we do is never representational: by the very nature of the art form it cannot be representational. It can only be aspirational, can only speak to those layers of emotion and reason that exist below the surface. Writers create new meaning with every choice of word, or phrase, or simile: love is not sex is not shagging is not rape is not 'doing it', and each time we choose one description over the other we steer reality in a new direction of our choosing.

Writing was the last of the classic art forms (writing, sculpture, theatre, music, painting) to directly reach the mass audience, and the first-- and most brutally-- to be suppressed, because its audience needs to be taught a set of skills simply to receive it and to form an emotional response, but once those skills are learned, and once that emotive response is formulated, it can never be removed. The mere act of reception forces intellectual and emotional advancement on the part of its audience in a way that other art forms are simply not designed to do. Writing is the only art form that inextricably ties intellect and emotion into the mere act of reception.

To be a writer is to force your way of thinking onto the world in a way which can never be undone. And that, to me, is the greatest aspiration towards which an artist may reach.

THERE WILL BE A SHORT PAUSE WHILE I LAUGH MY FREAKING ARSE OFF

2011-09-10T18:09:00.000+08:00

According to Darkcounter, the last two Google searches that sent people to this blog were "pictures of handsome Jehovah's Witnesses" and my old friend "Billie Piper's Nipples".

I'm going to be trying to fit them into the same image for days..... :))

SOME DAYS, YOU GET THE BEAR

2011-09-10T18:00:00.000+08:00

Today has just been one of those days where the good arrives in numbers.

This weekend is Luscious Lyn's annual Jehovah's Witness convention, so this morning the kids and I dropped her off at the Burswood Dome and shuffled into the Perth City Centre to pick up Blakey Boy's birthday presents for next weekend.

As always, kids + me + Perth = the museum, to gape at the mummified thylacine, boggle at the size of the muttaburrasaurus skeleton, open all the drawers in the discovery centre, and generally run up and down the corridors pretending to be dinosaurs. Where the kids used some of their going-out money to make their Mum a badge because they decided she needed one to make up for not being with us. And the birthday-shops in question had mega-cool stuff just begging to be Blaked. And Connor was pulled out of the crowd around a street magician to be his assistant for a bunch of tricks. And even the happy meals the kids had for lunch contained exactly the right random toys to make them happy (A Wolverine for Connor and a singing Smurf for Erin.)

An anonymous street magician and the C-Train deliver the famous 'Making Sure the New Pope is a Fella' trick....

I, of course, did not have a kiddie-toy happy meal. Because I had already picked up these in the shop before lunch. I am 40, and I play with grown up toys....

Even my Ninjago will be ex-ter-mi-nated....

And to top it all off, my first short story acceptance in several months has dropped into my inbox this evening. Subject to editorial requests, Comfort Ghost will appear in the upcoming ASIM 56. I'll let you know when.

Some days, everything comes up sunny.

AND WHILE I'M BANGING ON ABOUT LEGO

2011-09-10T17:12:00.000+08:00

One of the things I've wanted to do since I started getting back into Lego was to post a MOC-- short for 'My Own Creation-- a common practice amongst the Legorati, who create all sorts of wonderful, amazing edifices and then post photos and/or plans of the construction process so that others can build the same creation. (Such as these guys and these and this and this and.... well, you get the idea) Only two things have stopped me doing so before this:

1. I'm a bit crap, and
2. Compared to guys like this, anything I might do would simply show me up for the utter noob with two left Leggoey feet that I really am. I'm also completely incapable of making up instruction sheets that look like they may have been drawn by a Lego artist with a couple of spare hours to kill before The Big Bang Theory starts. If only I'd paid more attention in Lego class...

Still, nothing ventured, nothing failed. So here's a little ice-skimmer style vehicle I've whipped up and am moderately chuffed over, in wonkyphoto-a-rama! I've listed the relevant pieces, and their Bricklink piece number, under each pic, and in the case of rarer items, also listed the set from which I scabbed them.

Are you sitting comfortably? Then we'll begin.

An easy start: one 2x8 white plate (3034) and two 2x8 white plates with door rail (30586), taken from my City of Atlantis set (7985-1)

Step two: Add the rails to the plate, and flip. Attach two light-bluish gray 1x12 bars with plate ends and round 1x1 plate ends (42445, taken from the Lunar Limo set- 5984-1) to a white 2x4 plate (3020), and attach to one end of the structure.

Step three: Turn the right way up, and attach one 2x16 white plate with angled side extensions (62743), taken from the Ice Dragon Attack set (2260-1)

Step four: two more 2x8 white plate with door rails.

Step five: Invert again, and buttress the overhanging plates with a 2x6 white plate (3795)

Step six: Top side up again, and filling in the single line atop the front spar with, from left to right-- one 1x1 red tile with groove (3070b); one 1x2 white tile with groove (3069b). In this instance I didn't have a plain white one to hand so just shoved the first one I found in. It all gets covered, anyway; one 1x2 modified tile with stud (3794); and one 1x2 white plate with handles (3839), or as they've always been known to me, front guns.)

Step seven: Another 2x16 white plate with angled side extensions (62743) goes on top, and the back end is finished with two 4x1 18 white slopes (60477) and a 2x2 white brick (3003)

Step eight: And finished with, from left to right: a 2x1x2/3 red slope 18 with 4 slots (61409) from the Seabed Strider (7977-1); a 1x4 white tile (2431); a 2x2 white tile with red warning triangle pattern (3068bp06); and at the top of the rear bricks a 1x2 red modified tile with grill (2412) and two more of the red slope with 4 slots.

And she is done.

All comments and small coin donations welcome! and if any experienced Lego builders want to contact me with any advice, please feel free.

YELLOW LEGO, WHITE LEGO, YELLOW LEGO, WHITE LEGO....

2011-09-08T10:12:00.000+08:00

What a fun couple of weeks it has been. Luscious Lyn is out at schools, participating in her first teaching prac, and I've taken my first properly holiday since starting the new day job 18 months ago in order to take on the housey chores in her absence. Which has meant, amongst other thimgs, that a bunch of those niggly naggly little chores that I haven't found time for have finally been dispensed with-- the dishwasher's been removed; the towel rail's been put up in the kitchen; the lego has been cleaned....

Huh? I hear you cry.

It's like this: a few weeks ago, Georgie Girl participated in her school's science fair. Her project involved soaking discoloured Lego bricks in various solutions, from water through to Napisan, leaving them in different levels of light, and recording the results. She won second prize, beaten only by the girls who injected various distillations of iron into apples to compare to haemophilia treatments.

Yeah, I know: makes me wish I'd paid more attention in school and hadn't spent all my time trying to connect the element names in the periodic table together into dirty words.

However, I had purchased a 1994-era police truck on the extremely cheap precisely because it had discoloured bricks: a bit of internet research had clued me in to the best ways to clean up discoloured bricks, and the price made it worth while to give it a try. If I succeeded, I'd get a much better kit for my money. If not, I hadn't paid enough to really bemoan the failure. all I needed was 15% hydrogen peroxide, an oxy cleaner, and a source of UV light.

Vroom, vroom. I am a 40 year old man and I play with adult toys!

Oxy cleaner: check. We have kids, therefore, we have Napisan. UV light, check: thank you, approach of the spring sun. 15% hydrogen peroxide...... hydrogen peroxide.... Beuller... Beuller.... 15% hydrogen peroxide does not seem to have made it to Mandurah. Funny, when you look around at the teenagers in the shops....

Anyway, needs must, and where there's Domestos there's hope.

So, I picked me a large, lidded specimen from Lyn's Tupperware addiction, separated the whites from the colours (See, ladies, men can do this. You just need to provide the proper motivation, is all.) and dropped the white pieces into 500 ml of Domestos and a quarter of a cup of Napisan.

Three days sitting on top of the kids' slide in the sun, and this was the result:

Before and after the bleach/oxy bath

I wouldn't try it on colours because, well, bleach is bleach, innit? But for whites that worked just fine thank'ee.

THE CORPSE-RAT KING MAKES AN ANGRY ROBOT A HAPPY ROBOT

2011-08-21T12:07:00.000+08:00

Back in March, I responded to the Angry Robot Open Submission Month for un-agented authors, along with, as it turns out, 943 other authors. Each of us sent in a synopsis and five chapters of our chosen novel-- in my case, The Corpse-Rat King, with the understanding that we'd probably get rejected by the first reader, and if not, then the partial that was requested would probably be rejected, and almost certainly, if we got past that hurdle, the full manuscript that was subsequently requested would be rejected. Less than 1% of all manuscripts submitted were even going to get to the editors, and even then, they might not take any on.

But any chance is worth taking, so 944 of us took it.

A partial was requested, and I sent it in. Then the full manuscript. I sent that in, too. And three days ago, Angry Robot emailed me to let me know that The Corpse-Rat King has been forwarded to the editors so that they can decide whether or not to offer me a contract, one of only 9 manuscripts to make it that far. Coincidentally, that's less than 1%

I'm a little chuffed :)

I'm trying not to get my hopes up: to be rejected at the last hurdle is like winning a pat on the back in the lottery, but I'm happy-- this is a validation of my novel-writing attempts, and a big fat hint that there is something in my work in this new (for me) format that's worth paying attention to. As I've said previously, it took me a long time to sell my first short story, and the lessons I've learned over the last decade of short story sales are counting for something. The chickens aren't hatched, and I haven't counted them, but at least the breeding program has relevance.

One beer, and back to work...

The full list of books has been announced here.

KUDOS TO GEORGIE

2011-08-21T11:49:00.000+08:00

A big word- up to Georgie, who has spent the last six weeks soaking discoloured white lego plates in various solutions in the name of science, and who, this week, took them all out, dried them, recorded the results in her best sciency recordingy way, and took the whole lot down to the Mandurah Senior High School Science Fair, where she came in second and received all sorts of cool stuff including a certificate, medal, and seat on the next space shuttle flight.

Okay, that last one's a lie, but the rest is true, and cool.

SPRING IS HERE, SPRING IS HERE, LIFE IS SKITTLES AND LIFE IS BEER

2011-08-21T11:33:00.000+08:00

I think the loveliest time of the year is the spring, I do. Don't you? Of course you do.

Okay, maybe I'm a couple of weeks early, but by God, what a glorious weekend it's been. Sunny and 25, sunny and 25, even at midnight it's been sunny and 25 that's how good it's been. And call me a sad old suburbanite if you will, but there's something good for the soul in watching your children play on the lawn you've just mowed, with the smell of fresh-cut grass in your nostrils and the budgie cages going mad with tweets and twits and all manner of chirpy noises.

It's been that sort of weekend.

I'M SICK, I'M BORED: ENTERTAIN ME

2011-08-05T09:53:00.000+08:00

Off work since Wednesday with a massive lurgi, and I've finally read every comic in the house and watched every episode of QI a-GAIN, so now it's your turn.

Tell me: who is the worst writer of all time?

I'll open with Guy N. Smith, inflicter-upon of such delights as Night of the Crabs, The Sucking Pit (not as sexy as it might sound....) and Satan's Snowdrop.

Anyone wanna raise?

SUNDAY YOUTUBERY

2011-07-31T11:46:00.001+08:00

A big call out to Andrew McKiernan, Dedman, Haines, Baxter and the rest of the Pink Floyd Conversationalists on FB this weekend.

1000! 1000 POSTS, WA-HAHAHAHAAAAA!

2011-07-30T11:34:00.001+08:00

Wot 'e sez.

'Tis true: my 1000th post, and how fitting that it should be by way of a general Nate of the Station update. For it has been a busy couple of weeks, my little cabbage-leaf wrapped spatchcocks, and much WriterGuy goodness has been noticed.

We're five weeks into the first intake of the Australian Writers Marketplace Online SF Course, and the second intake has now begun: it's not too late to enrol, and we're only chatting amongst ourselves until you can make it.

My first set of students have become analytical T-Rex's and are producing story beginning after story beginning-- there will be some hypercharged writers with a trunk full of stories coming atcha in the next couple of months, and it's been gratifying to watch as they turn on to what I'm teaching and apply the lessons to their own writing. It really is quite amazing how an author's work can evolve in a short period of time just by absorbing a few well-placed lessons, and there are a couple of names who are going to come out of this course and establish themselves over the next year or so. At which point I shall claim bragging rights and mango beer tributes in equal measure.

The agent search for The Corpse-Rat King continues: I've had a number of requests for partials, and one full has been asked for as well, so even though the rejections come regularly there's enough interest out there to keep my spirits up. The adjustment from short stories to novels is a sharp one, and I have to keep reminding myself that it was a long time between writing my first short and selling my first, and that I can't expect to simply pen my first longer work and have the world fall at my feet. Will I sell this one? Dunno. Will I have the patience and fortitude to write three, five, eight novels before I sell one? Fuck, I hope I don't have to. But if I do, so be it. Everything is a learning curve. Still, let's hope I sell CRK and we can go from there...

On the appearance front, I'll be heading out into the wide world in my WriterGuy disguise on a couple of occasions over the coming months:

Luscious and I have both been shortlisted in this year's KSP Speculative Fiction Awards, and I've been invited to attend as the guest author for the day, so I'll be giving a little speech about my writing life and philosophies (and trying not to sob) as well as giving a reading, kissing babies, and doing the watusi with any stray gypsies who may be passing. Join us on the 14th August at the KSP Writers Centre to find out the winners and share in the general bonhomie and watusiriness.

I'll also be heading out to Curtin University on the 26th of September to deliver a guest lecture to a Web Publishing class on social media and how I use it as part of my Dayjob and WriterGuy goings on. (Part of their Internet Communications Major, and how old does that make me feel? You can get a degree in the Internet. A degree. Does your degree come in pdf? I'm going to have a Horlicks and listen to my 78s will I think about it). That's right, me: the guy who couldn't get Google + to work, and still can't get it to link to FB and Twitter properly. Me. Anyone else as amused by the thought as I am? Send your reply via this blog, my website, my Amazon page, twitter feed, Goodreads page, LinkedIn profile, Facebook, Google +, AHWA member page, or Livejournal RSS feed, or just tag this blog on Stumbleupon like any reasonable person would....

Lastly, as part of Dayjob World, I've taken up the mantle of Municipal Liaison for the Rockingham/Mandurah region of Nanowrimo once again, and have already started to compile the activities and prizes to keep everyone racing towards their 50 000 word target. Last year we conducted a series of workshops with Simon Haynes, Dave Luckett and Tehani Wessely as speakers. This year we'll be holding a masterclass with an internationally-renowned Fantasy author from Perth who shall not be named just yet because we're still confirming details but she's very cool and one of my favourite people in the biz, and I'm busy gathering prizes for The Night of Writing Dangerously event to be held on the 12th: five hours of catered writing time broken only by prize giveaways, competitions, and the opportunity to go head to head with an established pro to win yourselves goodies. More details as they come closer to hand, but if you really want to join in you could always register on the Nanowrimo website, join the Rockingham/Mandurah region, and take part in the write-ins that we'll be holding. All the cool kids will be doing it.

And that, for the moment, is about it. How was your day, my darlings?

I'M A ROCK. IT. MAAANNNNNN!

2011-07-14T08:57:00.001+08:00

Is this the single greatest musical performance in the history of human endeavour? Only history will decide.

I, on the other hand, may need bowel surgery now.

BAD BLOGGER, NO BISCUIT

2011-06-21T20:17:00.000+08:00

You will forgive me, of course, for I've been busy doing good Writer Guy things:

Firstly, news of the day is the start of my very first intake as AWM Online Learning SF Short Story Guru Guy (it'll take a big t-shirt to fit that title....). Due to circumstances beyond, well, stuff and things and junk, the course will start this coming Monday, the 27th June, rather than the 6th of June previously advertorialised (It's a word! Well it is TODAY!), so if you've been slapping your knee and cursing oh shucks, oh crivens at the thought of missing out on 6 weeks of my undivided attention, well, hie thee to ~~a nunnery~~ the AWM Online Learning Centre and sign yourself up. We're just chatting amongst ourselves until you get there.

Look, they even gave me a shiny web piccie thing with which to advertise:

Secondly, in news that will please any fans I have left out there minus any fans I have left out there who would much rather I was working on the Father Muerte novel, I've been hitting the agent trail with the completed manuscript of The Corpse-Rat King. It's a hell of a time-intensive task, putting final edits to a 250 page manuscript, especially when you edit in the 19th century way I still do-- print the whole thing out, go over it in 10 page batches with a pen, then input the marked-up edits back onto the manuscript, especially when your editing pain threshold runs to about 30 pages a day max, but a week off work recently (the only one I'm likely to have this year) gave me the impetus to apply arse to office chair and get the job done.

Feedback seems reasonably optimistic so far-- I'm hitting many more rejections than signs of interest, which is to be expected: it's a massive world, and agents have no compunction about binning enything that doesn't immediately grab them, because there's always another author wanting attention-- but there have been a couple of nibbles, which has been enough to keep my dander up. With any luck (tentacles crossed), it'll all bear fruit, and I can quit my job, order me up a swag of supermodels, and start shopping for zeppelins by the end of the year.

I've also been busy being Competition Guy: adminstering a short story competition through work and reading entries in the AHWA Short Story Competition, which I'm judging along with the incomparable Kaaron Warren and Stephen Dedman (both of whom have finished waaaay before me. Ahem.)

So I've been silent, my friends, but silent like a duck-- 1/10th quiet above water, whilst the rest of me makes heaps of farty bubble noises below. Or something like that.

It's part of my charm.

WRITING THE SF SHORT STORY: AN AWM ONLINE COURSE

2011-05-31T20:43:00.000+08:00

Want six weeks of my undivided attention, but don't know how to get it?

Well, yes, you can do that, but say you want my attention and you want to learn to write fabulosio short stories and you want to keep your clothes on and retain your dignity?

Can't be done, you say?

How wrong you are!

Starting June 6, that's right, starting next week, AWM Online, the online learning arm of the Australian Writers Marketplace, presents Writing The SF Short Story, a six week course penned and helmed by my little old self.

Over six weeks you will learn how to build worlds, character, voice and mood in this challenging and rewarding form. The Online Learning Centre gives you the flexibility to study at your own pace, when and where it suits you, as well as plenty of opportunities to interact with other students and receive feedback from me in course forums. Covering topics such as "Writing What You Know is For the Weak"; "Unicorn Physics"; and "The World Plus One", I'll take you through a multitude of writing and analytical tasks designed to give writers the skills necessary to create unique and eye-catching stories that will have the editor of your choice bending over and waving a lubed-up blank cheque in your direction.

Not to mention, you'll pick up a series of knowledge sets that, hopefully, will enable you to avoid many of the pitfalls encountered by aspiring short story writers who want to work in the speculative fiction field. You'll also create a body of work you can begin sending out to magazines and anthologies.

The course is split into two broad sections: writing, and analysis. Students will be expected to deliver written work regularly, and to discuss a series of questions on the course forum each week. I'll be dropping by twice a week to answer any questions and interact with students 'live', as well as providing feedback, commentary and advice on the work handed in for assessment.
Most of all, however, the course is about having fun-- opening up your imagination and letting it fly on the strongest winds possible. You'll read works from some of the best speculative fiction writers, get an opportunity to make connections with peers and colleagues, and have the chance to create new works in a safe and supportive atmosphere. And you'll write, write, and write again.

Which is still the most fun I've ever had sitting down.

Enrolments close this Friday, so head on over to the AWM Online Learning Centre and sign up.

EVERYTHING IS IN JASONI'S YARD

2011-05-31T20:26:00.000+08:00

A great big woot for my man Jasoni Fischerio, who has just announced his debut collection, Everything is a Graveyard, forthcoming from Ticonderoga Publications in late 2013.

Jason is supremely talented, not to mention as mad as a ferret in a bucket of ice cream, so you know he's one of my favourite fellows. You really want to be getting on to this book. Really. It's going to be the most entertaining book you read all year.

Don't believe me? Try some short samples on for size.

See?

GLAD I DON'T LIVE THERE, BUT A NICE PLACE FOR A SHORT VISIT

2011-05-01T14:33:00.000+08:00

I swore I'd never go there again. But it was a Natcon, and a large number of Eastern Staters who I hadn't seen in years were attending, and Tehani was involved in the organisation and kept hinting at us, and Lyn wanted to go, and Thursday night was a free night, and we were up for a couple of awards....

So we went to Swancon.

Originally we had planned to attend the free night on Thursday, and one paid day-- the Sunday, culminating in the award ceremony. Then we forgot to vote for the Tin Duck awards, which meant going back on the Saturday, and what the hell, seeing we were going to be there anyway we may as well pay for two days, and seeing we were going to be there for two days we may as well find a hotel to stay the night in, and soon enough, there we were, a hole the size of a couple of hundred dollars in the budget, and a whole lot more attendance at a place I was never going back to than I had originally planned.

Which turned out to be not such a bad thing, because Natcons are renowned as "writing" cons, and this one was no exception. Apart from catching up with long-lost friends like Paul Haines, Tansy Rayner Roberts, Peter Ball and Jason Nahrung, as well as again seeing the lovely Kate Eltham & Robert Hoge-- two of our favourite SF people-- we caught up with a raft of names we'd seen electronically but never added to our colection of flesh memories: welcome to the halls of my mind Alan Baxter, Kirstyn McDermott, Thorayia Dyer, and Lisa Hannett. Ignore the weeping and the cries for help. And a number of the panels were genuinely helpful on a writer-guy basis, with subjects such as "Writing for Money" and "Writer as Entertainer/Writer as Business Person". Notes were made, lessons were learned, and all that jazz.

We also managed to eat way more curry in two days than a couple should-- got to love the Swancon tradition of staging it in a part of Perth that is pretty much closed for Easter-- and joined in a public sniffling session with video clips of the late Elisabeth Sladen, and mooched around the bar being all writerly (ie: half-cut) on outlandishly expensive Guinesses. Oh, and the books: there were books, my friends, there were many books. I would like to justify it by saying it was all about replacing the termite losses, but who am I kidding? I wasn't going to need any excuse to pick up multiple Datlow-edited collections, never mind all the others. There were books.......

So would I do it again? No, I doubt it. A Natcon is one thing, and all the things that I enjoyed about this con were elements of a Natcon. A Natcon may be on the radar-- Melbourne next year looks good, and any year Brisbane wants to hold one I bet we'll find a way to get over. But Swancon is a different vibe. It was a nice place to visit for a day or two, but the sigh of relief as we came back over our own doorstep late on the Sunday night was genuine.

I like writers. I like writing. It's nice to spend time with both. But that's about it.

VALE

2011-05-01T14:08:00.000+08:00

Sad news in the last day, with the passing of Joanna Russ. Russ was at the forefront of a new, literary breed of writers like Ursula leGuin and Samuel Delany in the 60s, who helped modernise and expand the psychology of the SF genre. Her most well-known work within the genre was undoubtedly the novel The Female Man, but for me she was never better than her Nebula-winning short When It Changed, which I first discovered in Again, Dangerous Visions, and which was one of the first signposts towards proving to me that the SF tag of "literature of ideas" could be expanded to encompass challenging, socially confronting, human ideas, rather than simply engineering notations.

Russ is often overlooked, because her output was never overly large, and unlike leGuin she did little of her work within the regular genre channels. But she was a powerful, articulate voice for the humanism of genre writing, and her finest works are still brilliant reads. She was 74.

GOODBYE, SARAH JANE

2011-04-22T14:53:00.001+08:00

Sad news this week with the untimely death, at 63, of Elisabeth Sladen.

Sladen was, for me, a link in taste between me and my children: I had, of course, grown up with her as one of the, if not the, most iconic of Doctor Who's companions, and my littlies had come to her in a similar fashion with their own childhood fandom of the new Who series and the Sarah Jane Adventures. It's a death that has saddened us all, as a family, because it brings to an end an ongoing shared experience.

I've been trying to work out why I'm so saddened by her passing, apart from her relative youth: my own mother died at 61, and that similarity is enough to bring back hard memories of that period of my life. But I was never an actual fan of Sarah Jane Smith as a kid: I didn't like her.I found her shrill, and irritating, and was actually pleased when she left the series and her replacements came along.

But it's that word-- replacements-- that is the key. She may have made my teeth itch, but for whatever reason, I accepted her as the companion. Perhaps it was because she was the first companion I saw 'cross' Doctors-- from Pertwee to Baker, and that gave her constancy. I'd started with Liz Shaw, and endured Jo Grant, but had accepted their leaving and a new, separate entity taking their place with equanimity. But whatever it was: my growing maturity, or something in the writing and on-screen relationships, no companion after Sarah Jane came without baggage: after her, they were merely 'replacements'-- substitutes for what had been the real thing.

Funnily enough, I enjoyed her much more as an older woman, in her own show, where the charatcer could be strong and a leader in her own right, and the shrillness which was always part of her performance could be accepted as that of an older woman in fear for her young companions. Sladen was much more comfortable in that role, and had a fantastic ability to work with young actors that really shone on screen. Unlike other actors (think The Tomorrow People, or anybody who interacted with Wesley Crusher or Lucas Wolenczak), it was apparent that Sladen liked her young companions nand was at ease in their company. My kids loved the show, and it could have gone on for several more seasons, I think.

Either way, she was a big part of my childhood, and my childrens' childhoods, and for that, she will be very much missed.

(It won't embed, but you can watch the end of Hand of Fear here. It makes me all teary, now.)

AUSTRALIAN SHADOWS WINNERS ANNOUNCED

2011-04-22T14:39:00.000+08:00

Award news during the week, as the Australian Horror Writer's Association announced the winners of this year's Australian Shadows Award.

Midnight Echo #4 came up just short in the 'Edited Publications category'-- contest judge Rocky Wood called it "an outstanding achievement", which I think is testament to the talents of the contributing authors-- and I don't think there are many who would argue with the list of winners.

So heartiest congratulations go to:

Long Fiction winner: Under Stones by Bob Franklin (Affirm Press)
Edited Publication winner: Macabre: A Journey through Australia's Darkest Fears, edited by Angela Challis & Marty Young (Brimstone Press)
Short Fiction winner: She Said by Kirstyn McDermott (Scenes from the Second Storey)

NOT TO MENTION

2011-04-22T14:32:00.000+08:00

You don't have to wait until November for this baby; Fablecroft Publishing's After The Rain is now available in dead-tree form. If you're at Swancon you can pick up a copy and hunt down authors, including Luscious and myself, for signatures.

The rest of you can pick it up here.

BOOKAGE!

2011-04-22T14:27:00.000+08:00

Announcements a-plenty this last week, including the Table of Contents for Coeur de Lion's hyper-cool looking Anywhere But Earth anthology: even if I weren't included, I would be salivating at this line up:

Margo Lanagan Yon Horned Moon
Richard Harland An Exhibition of the Plague
Sean McMullen Spacebook
Lee Battersby At The End There Was a Man
Jason Nahrung Messiah on the Rock
Angela Ambroz Pyaar Kiya
Kim Westwood By Any Other Name
Steve De Beer Psi World
Robert Hood Desert Madonna
Cat Sparks Beautiful
Penny Love Sibo
Wendy Waring Alien Tears
Simon Petrie Hatchway
Jason Fischer Eating Gnashdal
Robert N Stephenson Rains of la Strange
Alan Baxter Unexpected Launch
Chris McMahon Memories of Mars
Mark Rossiter The Caretaker
Liz Argall Maia Blue is Going Home
Calie Voorhis Murmer
Damon Shaw Continuity
Donna Maree Hanson Beneath the Floating City
Patty Jansen Poor Man’s Travel
Tristan Davenport Oak with the Left Hand
Colum Paget Pink Ice in the Jovian Rings
Erin Stocks Lisse
William Wood Deuteronomy
Steve Cameron So Sad, the Lighthouse Keeper

Any book with Harland, Nahrung, Hood and the mighty Fischerio in it is a must-buy anyway, but it's also a delight to see something new from Patty Jansen: Patty contributed the deeply, deeply creepy Little Boy Lost to Midnight Echo #4, so I'm excited to read something new from her.

The book is due for release in late November.

IN BETTER NEWS

2011-04-10T17:33:00.000+08:00

Some major word to my homey Mark Farrugia, who suffered under my tutelage back in the day as part of the AHWA's mentorship scheme. One of the stories we worked on, Allure of the Ancients, has found a home in Midnight Echo #5 in comic book format.

I'm still to receive my AHWA member copy of ME#5, so now I have a reason to really look forward to it.

SUDDENLY, EVERYTHING TURNED TO SHIT

2011-04-10T17:27:00.000+08:00

Wanna see what a couple of thousand dollars of termite damage to a library looks like?

Enjoy.

ONE TASK DOWN....

2011-03-30T13:22:00.000+08:00

Amazing what a weekend away can do, no?

For reasons best known to herself, the Luscious One has remained married to me for six years, and as a reward for her perseverence, the big kids sent us to Busselton for the weekend of our anniversary whilst they toiled like slightly emo Trojans to build us a vegetable garden in the back yard-- no mean feat, as there appears to be a solid layer of sandstone about a foot under our garden beds.

So with nothing to do but laze about for three days enjoying the sun and sand and each other's company, it was a perfect opportunity to take the laptop and get some writing done. In amongst the cafes, splashing about in the pool, cafes, walking up and down the jetty, cafes, art galleries, museums, cafes and the pool.

And done it was. The submission package for Corpse-Rat King was finalised, and sent out in time to catch Angry Robot's open submission period. And two short stories were completed: the 3000 word psychological fairy story Unseelie and 1500 words of 2nd-person POV called Ghosts of You.

With a quarter of the year gone I'm well and truly on top of my writing goals for the year-- the original aim was to send out Corpse-Rat King (done); write 6 new shorts (the above two plus the recently completed Attacking Waters makes it 5 and counting) and complete Father Muerte & The Divine (52K done so far).

Not bad at all.

Oh, and Busselton was bloody lovely :)

Feeling no pain.

Lyn, cracking up from the stress of 6 years marriage, and the horror of being in a seaside town in perfect weather with nothing to do but relax and enjoy herself. The poor thing. Still gorgeous, though :)

TO MY DARLING WIFE

2011-03-07T15:40:00.001+08:00

I see your most recent Lyn The Luddite post, and raise you proper, decent, actually good music :)

THIS SHIT IS LIKE CRACK, I TELLS YA!!!!!

2011-03-07T09:53:00.002+08:00

Six or so weeks ago, Connor sees an ad for Lego on the telly and immediately enters into six year old Lego lust.

He has a basket of the big blocks, but he's really outgrown them, and anyway, it'd be nice to get the kids something to stretch their imaginations. They're both arty kids, I remember Lego with a massive amount of nostalgia, and it'd be great to have some for them to play with.

We hit the shops to price some up.

We have a mutual heart attack.

We ask around, to see if anybody has some they'd like to give away cheap/free.

Our good friend Sally has a box of it in the garage. Our friend Sue Ann points us in the direction of Bricklink.

Aiden remembers that he has disposable income.

Six weeks later:

The big one in the middle is about a foot and a half long and has 1400 pieces.

And then there are the minifigs:

And that's just the sets. That's not counting the loose pieces, the blocks and plates and cones and weird wibbly bits that don't build up into something.

And it doesn't count the Atlantis set we have on layby. Or the T-6 shuttle Aiden went out yesterday and bought for himself after I took the photos.

I think I'm going to have to add a page to my website.

Crack, people. It's like fucking crack.

HOW TO BREAK YOUR MOTHER IN ONE EASY LESSON

2011-03-07T09:27:00.000+08:00

Lunch. Sizzler. Lyn and Aiden across from each other at the table, baby Luc in Lyn's lap, laughing and giggling as Nanna does the Nanna thing. Everything's cute and lovely and full of awwwwwwww.

AIDEN: You know what I love most about babies?
LYN: What?
AIDEN: They can't pronounce the safe word.

I couldn't see straight for about ten minutes.

SCARY LITTLE DOLL FACE BOOK IS GO!!!!

2011-03-07T09:24:00.000+08:00

The book with the creepiest little doll face cover ever is now ready to rock.

Go to Equilibrium Books to pick up your copy of Devil Dolls and Duplicates, which contains my story The Divergence Tree along with a host of other creepy and disturbing tales by some of the cream of Australian ickiness such as Chuck McKenzie, Jason Nahrung, Jay Caselberg, Kaaron Warren, Rick Kennett, Stephen Dedman and Sean Williams.

And really, don't you just want to buy two copies and give one to your nanna? I mean, can't you just see her face when she looks at this cover? can't you?

Are you my muuuummmmmy?

A SMALL MATTER TO END

2011-03-01T20:27:00.002+08:00

It's been exactly ten years to the day since I sold my first story.

Happy anniversary, The Divergence Tree.

SO WHY THE LONG GAP ANYWAY, BATTERSBY, IF YOU HAD SO MUCH TO YAMMER ON ABOUT?

2011-03-01T20:26:00.000+08:00

It's not often I recommend books on this site. But I'm going to recommend one now.

I picked up Booklife by Jeff Vandermeer a few weeks ago. It's a book about being a writer, rather than a book about writing: writing I can do, but there have been any number of times over the years that being a writer has felt beyond me-- too hard, too draining, I've not been emotionally capable of dealing with the demands, I've been too busy, Real Life (tm) has been too much, etc etc and so forth.

It's been a revelation. Clearly set out, quirkily individual, but steadily confronting all the issues I've encountered over the years and providing answers, and if not answers then at least strategies for finding my own, in simply digestible chunks, with exercises and anecdotal evidence to get you through.

They'll be prising it out of my cold, dead fingers.

One of the first things Vandermeer advises is this: create a mission statement. Too many writers, he argues, think tactically, not strategically. Without a view of the entire battlefield, we lurch from minor victory to minor victory with no clear purpose, and no way to string these victories together to provide something meaningful over a length of time.

I am that soldier.

So, this is what I've done, and this is why I've been so silent on the bloggerywebtitude front. Because, after a year of editing magazines, and judging competitions, and associated frippery, when it comes down to it, my aim, my mission statement, is this:

I want to be a full time professional author of novels and short stories, and to continue to advance my career as a teacher of writing.

A mission statement not only defines what it is you want to achieve: it helps define those tasks that don't fit in with your aims. It helps you learn what to turn down. If it doesn't fit the mission statement, why are you doing it?

So: this last month?

I've line edited Corpse-Rat King. I've submitted the online writing course I've been developing for the Australian Writer's Marketplace. I've finished a new short story.

Next month: Corpse-Rat King to Angry Robot before their open submission period ends. A new short story. Take up Father Muerte & The Divine and finish it.

I'm a man on a mission.

NOT TO MENTION...

2011-03-01T20:07:00.000+08:00

You know the full stop, right? Little dot that tells the reader when to stop the sentence and take a breath. Problem is, in speech, the full stop is implied, and can often lead to misunderstandings. (“I thought you were finished speaking. Well you stopped talking. Well, I didn’t know you were just drawing breath, you stopped talking. Who are you, anyway, Robert Mitchum?” and so on). Nobody finishes a sentence by actualy saying the words ‘full stop’. That would be silly.

Thankfully, my wife is a genius, and has solved this problem by the simple act of getting herself an iPad.

Now I *know* when she’s finished a sentence, because they all finish with “on my iPad.”

Problem solved.

TOO MUCH LYN IS NEVER ENOUGH!

2011-03-01T20:06:00.000+08:00

My darling wife has returned to Uni, for which I am eternally happy: she is far too intelligent, creative, and worthwhile to content herself with serving the family, and deserves every chance she can to achieve all the things in life she wants.

And thanks to the wonders of teknockery, you can actually be a part of her studies. That's right, fella, I'm talkin' at you! As part of the unit she's studying-- Living & Learning With Technology -- she's required to maintain a blog discussing her University experience.

Lyn The Luddite is that blog, and she's looking for followers. Go; read; comment; follow; absorb; put the free back into free education; the class back into classroom, the each bacn into teaching.... you know, all that stuff.

AND ON THE SUBJECT OF THE AHWA...

2011-03-01T19:59:00.000+08:00

That fine and august organisation has just released the shortlist for the 2010 Australian Shadows Award, and I was deeply chuffed to find Midnight Echo #4 on the list for 'Best Edited Publication'. I've always enjoyed editing, and the cast and crew of that magazine were an absolute joy to work with: talented authors, excellent and professional backroom staff, and good administration-- the whole process was a delight. That the end result has received a chance at winning such a gong is very, very pleasing indeed.

Full details are here, but in case you're hyperlinkingly challenged, the full roll call is:

LONG FICTION

Madigan Mine by Kirstyn McDermott (Picador Australia)
The Girl With No Hands by Angela Slatter (Ticonderoga Publications)
Guardian of the Dead by Karen Healy (Allen & Unwin)
Under Stones by Bob Franklin (Affirm Press)
Bleed by Peter M. Ball (Twelfth Planet Press)

EDITED PUBLICATION

Macabre: A Journey through Australia's Darkest Fears, edited by Angela Challis & Marty Young (Brimstone Press)
Scenes From The Second Storey, edited by Amanda Pillar & Pete Kempshall (Morrigan Books)
Dark Pages 1, edited by Brenton Tomlinson (Blade Red Press)
Scary Kisses, edited by Liz Grzyb (Ticonderoga Publications)
Midnight Echo #4, edited by Lee Battersby (AHWA)

SHORT FICTION

"Bread and Circuses" by Felicity Dowker (Scary Kisses)
"Brisneyland by Night" by Angela Slatter (Sprawl)
"She Said" by Kirstyn McDermott (Scenes from the Second Storey)
"All The Clowns In Clowntown" by Andrew J. McKiernan (Macabre: A Journey through Australia's Darkest Fears)
"Dream Machine" by David Conyers (Scenes from the Second Storey)

Honestly: not a dud amongst them.

Winners are announced April 15. Win, lose, or lose in some other way, I'll announce them here on the blog, so stay tuned.

HERE COME DA JUDGE

2011-03-01T19:52:00.000+08:00

It's a judgey kind of period for me at the moment. Apart from pulling duty on the Aurealis Awards graphic novels panel this year, I've also agreed to join the judging panel for the Australian Horror Writers Association's Flash & Short Story competition, along with the wise, talented, and downright spunky Kaaron Warren and Stephen Dedman.

Full details are here. Entries close 31st May, so get writing. Remember: I am a crusty and jaded old bastard, so if you want creep me out, you're going to have to work really hard. Or be Lady Gaga.

I'd prefer to read the story, though.

ARE YOU SITTING COMFORTABLY?

2011-03-01T19:46:00.000+08:00

'Ee, by gum, it's been a while. But there's a bit of news to be had, so let's be getting on with it, especially now that this blog is being archived at the National Library of Australia's PANDORA archive.

That's right: when the alien archaeologists of the far future land and want to find out just which Doctor Who character I most resemble, and just what was all the fuss about Billie Piper's nipples anyway, they won't have to search too hard to find out. I know I've been sleeping easier at night...

So, with a merry "can I borrow 5 bucks now that you've won an Oscar you talented little bugger?" to the mighty Shaun Tan, we probably aught to get on with some actual content, don'cha think?

MORE WRITING NEWS

2011-02-04T21:39:00.000+08:00

In not-raining-but-pouring news, after 2 years of no action at all I've sold my second story since the start of the year. At The End There Was a Man, a 6300 word science fiction piece about the sole survivor of a crash coming back to his ship after an absence of many years, has found a home with Coeur de Lion Publishing's Anywhere But Earth anthology, a collection of stories set, well, the clue is in the title...

As long as it's been since I sold a short story, it's been an extremely long time indeed since I've sold a pure SF piece, so I'm pleased to once again be paddling in unfamiliar waters. The anthology is dure for release in the 2nd half of 2011.

And I'll be taking on my 2nd judging role of the last year (after the 2010 Aurealis Awards): I've agreed to judge the Australian Horror Writer's Association's annual Flash/Short Story competition this year, so I'll be looking forward to trailing my fingers through the sticky entrails of people's imaginations once more, and making them feel bad for not being quite awful enough....

Guidelines are coming soon, so what are you waiting for? Get writing. Now!

HAPPY EIGHTEENTH, AIDEN

2011-02-04T21:17:00.000+08:00

A huge shout out to our eldest boy Aiden, who turned 18 during the week. I first met Aiden when he had just turned ten, and have seen him grow from a quiet, withdrawn and shy boy into a young man with such strong values, and such a mature and honourable attitude to life that I have long been proud to call him my son (we don't do halves or steps, and I'm glad. I want to be able to stand alongside all of my children without the artificial minimisation that comes with a blended family).

I look at him now-- a young man with a plan to follow a career in land management, his high school years behind him and a path through TAFE mapped out, with a young family of his own that he loves, about to leave the family home and begin his life as a man in his own right, and I am filled with pride, and hope for his future. And I am comfortable in the knowledge that whatever mistakes he makes from here on out, and whatever setbacks he may encounter, will come from his attempts to do the right thing, to be an honourable and humble man with the needs of those he loves uppermost in his mind.

You are already a man who makes me glad to call myself your father, Aiden. Happy birthday, son.

COZ I HAVEN'T MEMED SINCE PUSSY WAS A CAT

2011-01-29T19:37:00.000+08:00

A silly little meme currently rolling around Facebook. Thanks to Kat Campbell for putting it in front of my bored eyes:

‎1 - Go to wikipedia and hit random. The first random wikipedia article you get is the name of your band.
2 - Go to quotationspage.com and hit random. The last four or five words of the very last quote of the page is the title of your first album.
3 - Go to flickr and click on “explore the last seven days” first picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.
4 - Use photoshop or similar (picnik.com is a free online photo editor) to put it all together.
5 - Post it with this text in the "caption".

My effort-- "What You Get If You Don't" by Ma-Ubin. (Photo: MG9912 by Suki)

A SMALL MEASURE OF FLOOD ASSISTANCE, WITH BONUS READING MATERIAL

2011-01-13T21:31:00.000+08:00

We've been glued to broadcasts of the Queensland floods, as I know you have. It's scary, not only because of the sheer extent of the devastation and the tragic losses of life, property, and community, but because we almost instantly fell into a form of list-making-- tallying up those friends and acquaintances from the region and realising just how many people who have touched our lives are being affected by this. To all of you: Geoff and Diane; Kate and Rob; Nikki and Damon; Kim; Rowena; Trent; Marianne; Peter; Ben; Chris; Bob; Heather; Julie; Angela; Kathleen; the Clarion South guys; everyone at QWC; all the Visioners; the mob at Pulp Fiction; and everyone else in the ridiculously long list we came up with over lunch yesterday until we stopped for fear of the sheer scale of it that I've forgotten to mention here; and all your families; our hopes and prayers for your safety and welfare.

One way you can help, and get some fresh reading material by way of thank you, is to purchase a copy of the somewhat-ironically-titled-given-the-circumstances After The Rain ebook download: Fablecroft Publishing publisher/editor Tehani Wessely is in Queensland right now, being with her family, but has managed to create an electronic version of the book: 13 stories that will appear in the (larger) print book in April, including contributions from myself and Luscious, some of them in a slightly different form to the way they will appear in the print book, plus 3 essays on the floods and their impact on local communities by Queensland writers specifically commissioned for this special edition.

Tehani says of the ebook: After the Rain was commissioned in 2010 and is due for release in April 2011. However, in the face of the ongoing flood disaster in Queensland, the authors and I have pulled together this limited ebook version as a fundraiser. The authors have freely given their stories for this use. All payments will go to the Flood Appeal, and we are leaving it up to you to decide how much you want to pay for the book. We recommend at least AUD$10.00, but all donations are gratefully received.

Go here to buy it, or to query. The ebook is available until 15th February.

A GOOD START TO THE YEAR

2011-01-10T16:21:00.000+08:00

Europe After The Rain, a short story titled after one of my favourite paintings by the German surrealist Max Ernst, and featuring golems and the aftermath of the Dresden firbombings, has been accepted by Fablecroft Publishing for their anthology After The Rain, due to be released over the Easter long weekend.

It marks my first new short story publication in almost 2 years which, frankly, boggles the crap out of me.