ALMOST IN THE ENVELOPE, 'TIS

Well, the three chapter package is complete, a whole bunch of beta reader volunteers are offering their comments, and I'm beginning to fashion a synopsis that reflects the goings on in the novel. Nouvelle Hollande is less than a week away from being sent to the agents who requested a look.

Wonder if they'll remember me?

Time to start thinking about the next novel. The paranoid SF tale about identity loss, or the sprawling architectural fantasy about bridge civilisations? Or should I just say "fuck it" and write an 18000-line linked haiku about cats?

THE TWILIGHT HAS BEGUN TO FADE

Boy it's been fun listening to Luscious and Martin Livings talk about how far into their Fading Twilight stories they've been getting, while my block kept piling higher and higher, and the deadline loomed over me large a large hairy bloke with a hood and a sharp axe.....

Fully polished and complete 10 000 word story by the end of August? Like Hell it was going to happen.

Sat down last night, with no excuses left, and forced one finger after another onto the keyboard, trying not to look.

2800 words in 24 hours.

Block over :)

TWO BATTERSBIES IN ONE ISSUE: THE RACE IS ON

Luscious and I have co-habited three magazines so far: a jointly-written article in Gynaezine, an interview in the latest issue of ASIM, and of course, the approaching-legendary ASIM 11, which she edited and I appeared within. But we're yet to appear in a magazine as separate entities, that is, to submit stories independently of each other and have them accepted just like any other writer.

Well, it's on for young and old now: Borderlands Issue 6 is due out sometime between now and the end of the year, and we're both in it. And Luscious' story Hush has just been accepted for the Shadow Box anthology that accepted I Can Make You Famous... a few days back. It's a bloody creepy story, too. Shadow Box will be launched at Halloween.

Maybe Luscious and I are the only ones who care, but that's what you get for reading the blog...

TODAY I TURNED FOUR, AND KILLED ME A STUFFED TOY!

Happy birthday to our nephew Harrison, whose 4th birthday party we attended today. It's not every day your Mum bakes you a cake in the shape of a popular children's entertainer, just so you can carve a hole in his head!

I'm hoping Luscious bakes me one in the shape of Will Ferrell for my birthday, just so I can do the same thing......

POTATO POWERRRRRRR!

Remember the potato tower the boys and I built, just to see if it would work?

We knocked it over yesterday. Check out the booty:

Not bad for an experiment. We're going to build another one next weekend, and leave them in a bit longer. And soon we'll have an army of slave potatoes, ready to act upon our every command! Mwooohahahahaaahahaaaaaaaaaaacoughgaspsplutterchokegag.....

HANGIN' WIF MY PEEPS

What a fun weekend to be out and about with friends and family.

Friday night we shared our recently discovered Curry Restaurant Of Choice with fabbo duo Callisto & Cheshire, in the hopes of a spice-induced entry into the world for little Callicheshbub. No luck, but wine, laughs, conversation, and plate after plate of bloody lovely korma, butter chicken, mango chutney, papadum after papadum..... one day we shall gather you all and crowd out the 16 seat capacity and more.

Finished the night off by coming back to our place and gathering round the table for a game of Give Me The Brain, one of only two Cheapass Games games we own. If there is a funnier game to play in a group, I've yet to play it. We spent as much time bent over with our heads on the table, laughing until tears soaked the cards, than we did fighting over who had possession of the 'brain'. There's a rumour that the Cheapass Games guys may be coming over for Swancon next year. I hope so. I truly hope so.

Having the three Triffkids with us made the night truly memorable. They love being around our friends: they've just never met anybody quite like them, and you can see the kids just soaking up the personality on display. And having a chance to interact in such a wonderfully social atmosphere rewards us all. It doesn't hurt that the kids themselves are 3 of the funniest people I've ever met, and I love hanging round with them.

Then , on Saturday afternoon, we had the utter joy of catching up with Adrian and Michelle Bedford for coffee, where we were able to express our deep envy at the sexiness of Adrian's new book cover, and listen with unconcealed excitement as he hinted about his big writing news. Adrian has honoured us with a mention in the acknowledgements to his newest novel, and we're just happy to know that there will be a time when we can tell people "Oh yeah, we knew him when he was just a folk singer..." :)

Sometimes you forget how lucky you are to have good friends. It's people like Calli, Chesh, Adrian and Michelle who remind you.

SO PROFOUND IT SHOULD BE ON A T-SHIRT

So halfway through the card game, apropos of nothing, Oor Cassie drops this into the conversation:

You know, it's almost impossible to play Cluedo with only two people.

Almost?

DR WHO

Have any aliens sucked as much as the Slitheen? Okay, yes, but have any who sucked as much been given encore screenings, and proven so central to the plot arc of the series?

The Slitheen suck. No more Slitheen. Bring back the bloody Sontarans!

On a sidenote, my personal Badwolf theory: it's the Doctor, and the whole thing is a setup to haunt him for whatever actions in his past he's hiding from the others.

HOW THE HELL DO I RECONCILE THIS WITH BEING HAL CLEMENT?

As if you needed any more prove that these memes are retarded: first I'm a hard SF writer, now this?


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What Kind of Novel Should I Write?
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TICONDEROGA ONLINE ISSUE 4

Come one, come all Issue 4 of Ticonderoga Online is now, well, on line!


Stories by wily veteran Rob Hood and eager newcomer Ashley Arnold. An editorial by Russell Farr which has me dying to get to my issue just so I can disagree with him! Geoffrey Maloney interviews one of my favourite Australian SF authors, Trent Jamieson. Rusty B interviews Jonathan Strahan. No less than 8 reviews of magazines and books from here and overseas.

And all for free. which is exactly how much we get paid :)

ONE FOR TWO

Came home today to one acceptance and one rejection.

The rejection was from US magazine Cemetery Dance, which is a bugger because it's a US magazine, pays well, has a good rep, and I want to be in it. Durn.

The acceptance came from Antipodean SF, who will publish And Just Like That... in issue 92, due to hit monitors in January of next year.

I like what Ion Newcombe does with this ezine, and I nominate him for the Peter MacNamara Award every year. Whilst everyone I know in the biz seems to make a point of stopping each month to read the 10 flash pieces he assembles, and names like Sean Williams and Martin Livings happily support him by submitting pieces (Ion can't afford to pay, so getting names this big is a real coup), Newk himself remains largely unheralded, which is a bloody pity, imho.

Go. Read. Vote for your fave story. Go back again next month.

COMING SOON, TO A SMALL BOY'S MOUTH

Woke up this morning to find that Connor had sprouted two new teeth in his top gum, to partner the two in his bottom gum. There goes my habit of letting him chew on my finger for fun :)


10 SONGS I CANNOT LIVE WITHOUT

I've been thinking a lot about music recently, so I decided to put together a list of the 10 songs I can't live without. Dunno: maybe it's a manifesto-without-manifesting or something, one of those mid-life crisis moments where you have to outline to yourself what's important to you so you can die without questions, or something. Maybe it's just that this whole decluttering thing is happening internally too.

Fer what it's worth, in no particular order. Not necessarily even my favourite songs, or even my favourite songs by the mentioned artists. Just the ones I can't live without. Naturally, like any good list I make, the list of 10 has 13 entries:

1. Don't Come Around Here Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers
2. Wish You Were Here Pink Floyd
3. My Beloved Monster The Eels
4. Coin Operated Boy The Dresden Dolls
5. Wonderful Life Black
6. Desperado Alice Cooper
7. Boss Of Me They Might Be Giants
8. Hide Your Love Away The Beatles
9. Make Me Smile (Come Up & See Me) Steve Harley & The Cockney Rebel
10. Away Away Weddings Parties Anything
11. You Can't Always Get What You Want The Rolling Stones
12. Whole Of The Moon The Waterboys
13 Chicago Sufjan Stevens

ELVIS HAS RE-ENTERED THE BUILDING

So here's the news:

There was another pre-trial conference on Thursday. Friends and readers will remember how I felt after the last one, having gone in expecting some progress and returned with difficulties and upsets galore. I did not go into this one feeling the same way. I was prepared to go nowhere, and settle in for another wait.

I don't know what had changed in the meantime.

We reached a settlement on Thursday, one that represents the best compromise possible, and enables me to look forward for the first time since 2001. Legally, it is best that I say no more, but in any case, the details are between myself, Luscious, and the various legal personages involved.

But, oh readers, the upshot for us all is this: I have returned to this humble page. There is still some paperwork to be signed, and details to be confirmed. In the meantime, slightly-altered-but-more-or-less-normal service has been resumed.

To whit:

ADRIAN BEDFORD GETS COOL THINGS

Marvel at the utter groovy coolness of the new KA Bedford novel!

When I grow up I want a cover just like it.

SHADOW BOX

In my time away, I sold a story. Yay me. For the benefit of those to whom this sort of thing remains a mystery, I should define that statement by saying I placed a story. See, you send a story out in order to be rewarded. That doesn't necessarily mean you get paid money.

In this case, all I'll get is an electronic copy of the electronic anthology. But sales will help my good pals Shane and Angela keep their excellent website Shadowed Realms going, and help the fledgling Australian Horror writer's Association grow. Which rewards me, coz I'm a member, and I love the ezine.

Each story is a horror flash, of no longer than 120 words. Min is called I Can Make You Famous.

The anthology will be launched on Halloween night (when else?). Go. Buy.

MY WIFE IS A CLEVER THING INDEED

If you've journeyed past Shane Jiraiya Cummings' blog recently, you'll be aware of the Fading Twilight collection: 4 dark fantasy stories by the lad himself, Martin Livings, Luscious, and me. (No, no payment involved, just a percentage of future royalties on sale. Don't ask, just accept that there'll be bugger all cash involved).

Luscious finished her novella today: 11 and a half thousand words, the first to get to the end of her chosen tale. As a comparison, Martin's halfway or so through, and I've done....uh.... 95 words.

Lot of weather we're having lately, innit?

Can't wait to read her story: Aphrodite, Aboriginal spirits, death, rape, revenge from beyond all sorts of graves.... just my sort of thing :)

A WORD FROM OUR SPONSOR

There was another pre-trial conference today. And it went well. I don't want to say too much, but I hope to report the end of the haitus soon.

A SHORT UPDATE ON THE LENGTH OF PAUSAGE

My lawyers tell me that it will be mid-July before the next pre-trial conference, although there may be some sort of resolution at an informal meeting before then.

At this stage, apart from updates of this type, I shall be remaining off-stage until then.

THERE WILL BE A SHORT PAUSE

I went to the pre-trial conference today. My lawyer had told me that the other party were ready to discuss terms.

I should have known better.

The last three years have seen a procession of delaying tactics, lies, and fallback positions as the defenders of this upstanding member of the medical communiy have stood by his hard-won honour. I mean, my wife went into hospital tohave a baby, and the he killed her. He killed her. And we're still arguing? 3 and a half years later?

Now, here's the latest tactic: the opposing lawyers have been reading this blog. And they've decided to use it against me. You see, according to them, the entries in this blog prove:

a) that I have a spectacular writing career that's so successful I was able to leave work, not for the reasons of stress, grief, and the need to look after my baby that I had mentioned, but because my career was so brilliant that I had to take care of it as it leapt towards superstardom. Believe it: these people want me to give them proof of my earnings! Writers can stop rolling around the floor laughing and muttering "Stupid c*nts" now.

b) that I no longer care about the death of Sharon, because I don't mention her very often. It's not considered that maybe I don't talk about her because I try to use this blog to keep some positivity in my life. Again, people who know me can stop rolling around etc etc.

c) That the positivity I do express in the blog, the mention I make of friends and family, the plans I talk about, in fact, everything in this entries that does not paint me as a ruined wreck of a man, prove to these money-grubbing leeches that I deserve no recompense, no compensation, no sense of closure over their client killing someone who was in his care. Let's not laugh at this one, shall we? Let's treat it very seriously.

What this does draw into high relief is that there are people out there, and today I learnt their names, who read this blog with the express intent of using its contents to ruin my life. According to them, I am not allowed to live a life. They've lived lives over the last 3 years. My own lawyers have lived their lives. The man who killed Sharon has lived his life. Hell, he's even practiced, and undoubtedly been allowed to deal with other pregnant woman (and doesn't that make your blood a little colder?).

But I am damned by these people. Everything I do is turned into a weapon against me. If I show the slightest sign of happiness, these harpies are waiting on the wing to twist it into something they can hurt me with. If I gather together the shards of the life their client ruined, and attempt to build something from it, they're reading these entries, working out ways to ruin me again.

And for what?

To save their client an insurance premium.

I will not give them another chance. Until this matter is sorted, and they have crawled back into their respective swamps, I'll be taking a powder. My life is my own, and I will not have it turned into a defence for that filthy bastard. So for now, this journal shall remain on hiatus. I'm sorry. I hope those of you who have enjoyed it will understand.

THE DREAM IS OVER

We didn't attend Aiden's soccer match on the weekend. His father decided he wanted to watch him for the first time, so we didn't go. It's just easier that way.

This meant that Aiden's lucky talisman, Connor, wasn't there for the first time. I just looked up the score on their webpage.

They got done. I mean Everton against Arsenal done.

2-9.

2 (1, 2) - 9 (1, 2, 3, 4, oh bugger it, what's on the other channel?)

I draw no conclusions......

OH, HE'S ON A ROLL TONIGHT

The collection's gone to Prime. Boy, I love email.

GETTING THROUGH THAT TO-DO LIST

Luscious is out with friends tonight having a girlie-sesh, so I've managed to finish that review book and write the review, as well as plough my way through the rest of the manuscript I'm assessing. A couple of days to recover from the awfulness of it all and then I'll launch into the report itself. A short pause for breath and then the short story collection package beckons...

There's plenty of rest for the wicked. It's us oppressed wot have to keep dancing.

A PERSONAL VERSION OF HELL

Working for a company with an 'H' as part of the name, and hearing the trainer pronounce it haitch for 8 hours a day.....

CONTAINS UNBEARABLE CUTENESS

How can you not love a 3 year old who wakes you up by flinging open your bedroom door and shouting "Exterminate, exterminate"?

A LONG DAY TOMORROW, MY LITTLE ONES

After three and a half years, and more delays than a federal rail project, the defence lawyers for the doctor who killed Sharon have run out of excuses.

The pre-trial conference is tomorrow. I sit in one room, the defence leeches sit in another, and we pass notes back and forth arguing over just how much a human life is worth.

Just me, and a set of suits who have accepted money to justify killing a perfectly healthy woman.

It is not likely to be a happy experience. The doctor who did the killing won't even be required to attend. Perhaps he has an important 18 holes booked or something.

The house is quiet, and I can't get the lyrics from the Pink Floyd song The Trial out of my head.

Just five minutes, Worm your Honour. Him. Me. Alone.

THERE'S A REASON, OKAY?

I realise it's been a wee while since I posted, and that I haven't mentioned the weekend, in which Luscious and I had a brilliant kafeeklatch with the extraordinarily talented Canberra writer Matthew Farrer (if you haven't checked out the first CSFG anthology Nor of Human, it contains Matthew's story Tales From the True Desert, which would go close to being the best Australian fantasy short story of the last 5 years). Neither have I mentioned bumping into Aki, the event which shall be known only as The Great Battbrat Shopping Palaver, Calli's baby shower wot I missed due to Bonus Daughter Picking Up duties, and other events of the intervening period.

Explanation is simple.

I have a day job again.

Honestly, I'll blog. It's just been 16 happy work-free months, that's all. I just have to get used to these early mornings again. It's one thing to get up to a baby at 6am. It's another to get up, stay up, and be in an office building in the city before you've really noticed you're not back in bed yet.

AND STILL SO MUCH TO DO

Edit the novel. Finish reading the latest review book. Finish reading the manuscript I'm assessing and send back the 3000 word report. Send the final edit of the short story collection to the publisher. Writer short stories for Eidolon (due June 1), The Outcast (July 31), and a 10 000 worder for Fading Twilight (August 1)

Gordon Bennett!

SHE MUST LIKE ME NOT BEING AROUND

Came home tonight to the wrong house. It's so clean!

I don't know whether that means Luscious really misses me and was compensating, or she's glad I've got my fat arse out of her way so she can get things done.

My clothes are still in the cupboard and the suitcases aren't anywhere in sight. That's a good thing, right? :)

RISE OF THE POTATOES

Up.....

And up.....

It's taken a week to go from one tyre to three. Do I stop before I need a ladder, or after?

COLLAPSES IN WET, SOGGY HEAP

Too many personal problems to list and almost 77 000 words later:

I've finished the first draft of the novel.

Now for the line-editing. I've got a couple of agents asking to see the first 3 chapters and synposis, so that's the first priority. Then all I have to do is smooth out all the dead ends I threw in over the last umpteen months, and polish it until it looks like I meant every word.

Dead easy :)

TEGAN? TEGAN?

Grant Watson might think me mad for preferring Jon Pertwee's Doctor to his own favourite, Sylvester McCoy (Hey, Grant thinks Alien 3 is a good movie...). But even he couldn't defend these people, could he?

A Fan Club for Tegan Jovanka

Because those loud-mouth whiny companions are the reason we kept tuning in......

WHAT A BUTCH WAY TO INJURE YOURSELF......

2 months before Erin was born, I was involved in a car accident when the driver of another car decided stop signs were for other people, and blessed me with a lifetime of chirporactor bills.

A straight spine may be the shortest journey between hips and skull, but I'm made of more interesting stuff than that. Of particular fun is the spot just between my shoulder blades, where the spine takes a 20 degree turn to the left. The chiro keeps putting it back where it belongs, but every now and again...

I rolled over in bed the other morning. That was all. Just rolled over. Spine went pop. Audibly.

My chiro had better name his next boat after me, that's all I'm saying. At least I can stand up straight again.

NORMAL BUSINESS HAS BEEN RESUMED

Thanks to Luscious, the depression has passed. And hopefully, the block as well. I owed Mynxii a single-panel cartoon for the next Swancon progress report, and drawing it the other day seems to have released something: I've come up with the plot for my Eidolon story, plotted out my Fading Twilight story, and best of all, worked out what happens to finish the novel and written 800 words of same.

Lyn's out with the kids all afternoon, so I'll get some more done today as well. Thank goodness that's over, until the next time.

I DON'T KNOW HOW TO FEEL ABOUT THIS

I'm part of the workforce again, as of Monday. Unavoidable, and it's exactly the kind of part-time job I wanted, but I find myself in deep ambivalence about the whole thing. Thing is, anything that isn't writing or being at home with my wife and children is an interruption, nothing more or less.

Ah well, can't have everything. I don't want to work, but lifestyle demands. Better get off my arse and sell this novel...

A DOCTOR WHO JOKE WITH SPOILERS

Warning: if you're one of the three people in this country not watching downloaded versions of the new Doctor Who series, look away now.

Thanks to the kindness of friends (and I can't help but think it was their way of contributing to snapping me out of my depression. If so, it worked) I have a shiny DVD filled with the 1st seven episodes of the new Doctor Who series. We sat down with the kids and watched them on the weekend. We had to: the boys wouldn't go back to their father's house until we did :)

They're all pretty damn good, but episode 6, Dalek, is perhaps the best episode of Doctor Who ever made. They've done with a single Dalek what nobody in 26 years was able to achieve with whole armies of the buggers: turn it into a genuinely terrifying machine of war. Based loosely on an audio play (I think) called Jubilee, the plot can be narrowed down to Single Dalek stalks entire compound of heavily armed and scared shitless humans. The story is by turns frightening, tense, and filled with such pathos and tenderness that you find yourself with tears in your eyes at the possible fate of a giant pepperpot with a latex muppet inside.

It gives nothing away to tell you that at one stage, in order to gain knowledge of his enemies, the Dalek accesses and downloads the entire internet in less than a minute.

Cassie's comment? "My God. How much porn must he be watching?"

Dalek Porn. Don't think visually...

I AM SERIOUS, AND DON'T CALL ME SHIRLEY.

How frustrating! Martin brought the comedy classic Flying High to the Sunday Movie Night (It is a comedy classic! It bloody is!), but the disc went spla part way through and so we didn't get to see the whole thing. Mind you, as someone pointed out, Martin and I could probably have recreated the rest of the movie in 3D, so constantly were we quoting along with the action :)

I was having weird time traveller comedy moments all the way through: laughing at jokes that were 15 minutes away from being on the screen, as my memory ran ahead of what was being shown...

The biggest pain is that I now have to rent it out, and Flying High 2, so I can watch it properly.

THERE IS NO SAVING HER

What's sadder than watching Big Brother? Watching it on the TV and at the same time having the webpage up on your laptop and scrolling through pages reading about it.

THE BLUE REVOLUTION CONTINUES

A lucky 2-all draw on the weekend, but we've got another point in the bag and remain undefeated. The mighty Bassendean Juniors juggernaut rolls on.

Aiden got some quality minutes under his belt, played as a striker in the first half and in central midfield in the second. He even got in a good, crunching tackle and made a header!

You know, the Premier League season has just ended, and clubs will be looking for holding midfielders...

POTATO PROGRESS

The boys and I placed the second tyre on the potatoes on the weekend, leaving a few shoots above the rim as the vaguely-remembered Better Homes & Gardens magazine had advised (I think). I went out to the backyard this morning, and those shoots are already high enough that I could put the third tyre on.

I think I'm raising triffids...

PISS OFF, DOROTHY

A tornado! A frigging tornado! A frigging tornado ran straight through Maddington, turned left, came down our street, destroyed the roof, fence, trees, and backyard of the guy across the street and left us completely alone!

Okay, some tubby girl and her dog knocked on the door and asked us if we'd seen a witch anywhere, but I just gave her 5 bucks and told her to see a counsellor. But a tornado! A frigging tornado!

Un-fucking-believable.

SMOOOOOOOTTTHHHHH....

Had a job interview yesterday, and as we were blacked-out because of the tornado, (A tornado! A frigging tornado!) I wasn't able to shave, running razors across my face in the dark being one of my least favourite activities. There was only one thing for it: off to the barber's.

I've been married twice, and each time wanted to have a proper shave at a barber's on the morning, only to find it was unfeasible for various reasons. I tell ya, I was missing out. That shave was smooth, and I got a bit of an understanding as to why women and local gangsters in crappy mafia movies spend so much time and money on getting their hair and faces done. It ain't cheap (44 bucks for the shave and a haircut) but the sense of confidence it gives you is worth a packet. This self-pampering business is seductive.

AND I DO THIS WHY?

A hard day at the salt mines, comrades. Luscious, given a couple of hours of freedom, manages to write over a thousand words on her latest Rich-Horton-And-Tangent-Online-Are-Gonna-Talk-This-Up-Like-Nobody's-Business story. I, given a couple of hours of freedom, well.... I write that review that I'm giving to Ticonderoga online for free. I line-edit half a page on the novel before the sheer tedium of it sends me screaming to the lemonade bottle and a pace around the garden (Never mind one of the agents emailing me this morning asking if I've sent the package yet. I'm line-edited out. The thought of doing any more, after the collection, makes my skin crawl. I'm 1 1/2 chapters into the 3 chapters x4 edits I need to do. Shit shit shit. Why isn't anything ever fucking easy?) I try to finish the Council for the Arts grant application that I have to send tomorrow. I look at the 2 page project outline requirement and put my hands over my face.

Some days it isn't worth climbing down from the trees. Some days the trees are a bad idea and we should never have left the ocean in the first place. (Paraphrased from a book they really should have made into a funny movie...)

Yeah, okay, I finished the application this evening. But it's not actually writing, is it? That I don't do anymore.

MORE GARDEN SUCCESS

A quick survey of the garden reveals, besides the potatoes: 10 strawberries, 4 capsicum, and 4 tomatoes, all in various stages of growth.

I confidently predict an entire salad by Christmas.

I'M LEE, FLY ME

A couple of people have requested information on how to preorder The Divergence Tree, so in the interests of the massive (well, a couple of you) public clamour, I tell 'ee:

Go to The Prime Books Website. There's no information on the book as yet on the site, but if you hit the Contact Us link, you can email them direct and badger them until they give you an order just to shut you up.

There. Easy, eh?

SPANKY COVERS FOR NEW PROJECTS





Purdy, aren't they? They're the front and back cover for an upcoming project under the control of Shadowed Realms poobahs Angela Challis and Shane Jiraiya Cummings. 4 fantasy novellas presenting the darker side of the West Australian experience, writing by yours truly; Luscious; the ever-froody Martin Livings, and Shane.

Writing for this could be fun: I don't normally write at the length I'm being asked to present, so it'll be a good stretch of the writing muscles, and there are a few ideas I've been wanting to play with that might get an airing. More news as it arrives, folks.

LET'S TALK ABOUT SOMETHING POSITIVE AS WELL, SHALL WE?

Two weeks, ago, the boys got all excited when Luscious and I were talking about putting in a vegetable garden, so I bought some seeding potatoes and dredged my memory for an article I'd read in Better Homes & Gardens a few years back. There's a way of growing them using four car tyres, and by strange coincidence we have four sitting behind the shed.

So we got out the back and planted our crop: the boys in a state of excitement, me in a state of Ah well, if my memory's rubbish at least we had a bonding moment and had some fun together.

Check 'em oooouuuutttt.........

A Battersby growing things. What next?

REVIEWY GOODNESS

Go here, and read a review of ASIM 17, in which the reviewer talks Luscious up like it's going out of business. And it's all deserved, too :)

AND PRESENTS TO BOOT!

A fabulous Mother's Day yesterday. Lyn made out like a bandit: two herbal candles from Blake, a round red ornament from Aiden that was immediately dubbed "The Eye of Sauron" (and is my personal favourite), a gorgeous bath set from Cassie she made up herself out of things she knew Lyn would like, and all the kids combined to get her a 6-cup coffee plunger ( necessary!) and a 3-pack DVD set of the documentary series Empires, covering the Greeks, Romans, and Egyptians.

We topped it off with lunch at Chatters, an Asian restaurant adored by Lyn and the kids, before we had to drop the children back at their father's house.

Sometimes, the very perfection of an occasion can be what makes it terrible. Having to drop the kids off after such a wonderful day was twice as painful as normal. I can't wait to get them back on Friday: we need a big weekend of fun, and they're co-opted :) After all, PRK's 30th birthday party is on Friday night, and the kids and he love each other's company, so there's a good start!

PAUL KIDD NEEDS TREATMENT

See? Told you so. I'd ring for the therapist myself, but I was too busy laughing my ass off.

THE MARCH TO GLORY CONTINUES

Three-two, threeeeeee-twwoooooooo.......

Take that, Kingsley. Who wants a piece of Bassendean Juniors, huh? Come on, who wants a piece of us? Huh? HUH?

Just give us the cup now and be done with it...

As an aside, one of the loveliest things about going to Aiden's matches each week is his assertion to anyone that will listen that Connor is his lucky talisman, and that the team wins because Connor is on the sidelines. His showing off his little brother to his teammates is so damn cute!

KUNG FU HUSTLE AND BIG BROTHER

Thank God PRK bought over an insane Hong Kong film called Kung Fu Hustle to the Sunday Movie night last night, otherwise all I'd have had to entertain me was the opening episode of that piece of low vileness, Big Brother. Lyn loves it, which is the only reason I'm not stalking Dreamworld with a high-powered rifle right now. There is no lower example of the depth of human increptitude than this show. All involved should be burned at the stake so even the alien archaeologists can't clone them.

There's a much greater difficulty in good movie nights than bad. Everyone has a roughly similar view on what makes a movie bad, and how that can be entertaining. But what makes for a good movie, well, that's a little more... personal. Which is why we've seen movies like Volcano High and Return To Oz in recent weeks, movies that leave me cold or indifferent, but which their owners love; and why movies I'd watch for pleasure, like Titus or Pi, have remained firmly shelved. One man's meat is another's two-hours-of-rhyming-couplets-kill-me-now...

Kung Fu Hustle, on the other hand, is so deliciously bad I was in tears from beginning to end with uncontrolled laughter, as were the rest of the crew. I needed it Perky, I really did...

ONE MAN, AND VEGETABLES

We did the shopping for the vegetable co-op yesterday. Seven shares, meaning everything had to be bought in multiples of seven. Off we toddled to the Malaga Markets. Lyn had control of the pram, so I had the task of taking boxes to the checkout to pay for them.

So I'm standing there, a bloke on his own, a large box of vegetables in front of him.

Halfway through emptying said box for the checkout girl, I become aware of just how many eyes are watching.... seven broccoli... fourteen bok choi... twenty eight mushrooms... seven bunches of spring onions.... I don't see anybody with him....

I love confusing the normals :)

INTERVIEW ARCHIVE

Ben Peek's interviews have been archived by Tabula Rasa, for the amusement of alien archaeologists of the future.

Mine is here.

Luscious' is here.

Then you can read everyone else's :)

WHEN WRITERS COLLIDE

A fabulous dinner was had on Saturday night, when Martin Livings, Dr Iz, Shane Jiraiya Cummings and Angela Challis joined us for wine, apricot chicken, and double entendres. Apart from much shop talk (all but poor Iz being writers and/or editors of one stripe or another), and a bowl of chocolate mousse large enough to bathe in, the highlight for me was watching Lyn and Angela form an instant bond of friendship that had Shane and I wondering whether we were going to have to fight for who slept on the couch!

Another dinner is on the cards, and soon. I haven't enjoyed an evening so much in a long time.

REAL LIFE (TM)

It's been a tough couple of weeks, kids. It started when the court case hit another setback- the pre-trial conference which should have been held on the 5th of this month (meaning the whole thing would likely be over now) was pushed back to the 26th because (wait for it, you'll love this one) the opposing lawyer forgot it was on and so didn't tell her client. Now I could talk all day about the levels of shitbaggery involved in a stunt like that (oh, how I could talk), but after three years, all it leaves me is depressed.

Connor is teething, and hasn't slept properly in weeks.

A relative presented me with a letter so vicious, so filled with hate and bile that the only recourse it gave me was to contact them and suggest we no longer associate. I am insecure about family as it is. Having one turn on me in such a fashion did nothing for my state of mind.

A major market rejected me, and in the next couple of days I found two friends had been accepted by that same market. Those friends are brilliant writers. But I've been blocked for so long, and struggling with motivation and need for writing, that the whole thing set me on my haunches. I've barely written a new word since January, and for someone who needs to write as much as I do, it's like suffocating.

Some fucker snuck up to our house in the middle of the night and stole the large jade plant and pot that we keep by the front door.

Erin has been unsettled, wetting her bed on a couple of occasions, and waking up multiple times each night crying and needing attention. Coupled with Connor's nights, neither Luscious or I have slept two consecutive hours for well over a month.

I dared not like a movie some friends liked (The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, fyi) and some of the reactions of people who did like it have had me wondering why I bother with fandom at all: I started out to be a writer, and somehow fell into fannish things along the way. Sometimes I can't remember why.

I live in pretty much constant pain, the result of a car accident two months before Erin was born. I see a chiropractor on a regular basis, which generally does the trick. This last month, it hasn't. Because I can only afford to visit him every three weeks, at best, it's meant that I've been in a hell of a lot of pain for most of the last 4 weeks. To give you an indication: I cannot change my son's nappy without it hurting. I cannot sit on a couch unless I am supported by the arm and back, and when I get up, it takes three separate movement to do so. I cannot sit in any other kind of chair for more than 10 minutes without pain. I saw the chiro on Friday, and experienced the first pain-free period in over a month. It lasted two days.

I've got an infection in my mouth and the bastard just won't die!

So apologies to anybody who's missed the dancing, juggling monkey-boy performances in the last little while. Lyn's got me on a course of St John's Wort and Ginkgo-Biloba, a natural depression remedy that doesn't leave you feeling like a warmed-up zombie, and which has brilliant results for her when she has to deal with her own black dogs.

With any luck, normal dancing and juggling services will be resumed soon.

I KNEW IT WAS ONLY A MATTER OF TIME

So: pressure from friends and husband, plus the fact she kept mentally blogging, has finally won out.

Luscious has a new blog.

I, for one, am bloody pleased :)

SHIT BUGGER SHIT SHIT SHIT...

It's official. Nottingham Forest have been relegated, making us the first former winners of the European Championship to be dropped to any third tier competition in the history of the game.

If you're a player, official, or board member of the club, you are a disgrace. Cloughie would weep to be associated with you.

ME HANDYMAN, YOU STOP LAUGHING

As part of the current self-sufficiency, food co-op, let's start a vegetable garden, stepping outside the mainstream kick, I made a compost bin out of a 44 gallon drum yesterday. And I only bled once. That's not bad going for me :)

I am the MacGyver of Huntingdale. Next up, a fully functioning lawnmower using only 3 paperclips and a photo of the former Pope...

MORE SELF-INDULGENT DADDY PICTURE GOODNESS

Never feed tequila to your infant...

UNDEFEATED, PREMIERSHIP-CHALLENGING, GO YOU BLUES!

Okay, so we're only two games into the season, but after beating Heathridge 4-2 in the first week, Aiden's soccer team backed up for a hard-fought 1-all draw with Inglewood this weekend.

I think that's good enough to start talking championships, don't you? :)

In action against Heathridge.

THANKS FOR READING

We passed 20 000 hits on the site last night, which would probably have happened a couple of days ago had I not lost half my template, and therefore, my hit tracker.

Thanks for reading, everyone. Now, if anyone's got any ideas how I can get this thing out there a bit more widely than it is at the moment, feel free to let me know.

MORE NOVEL PROGRESS

710 new words on Nouvelle Hollande today, which means the epilogue is finished and I only have the climax to complete until the whole damn shooting match is done, man, done! Also redrafted the first chapter, adding another 335 words, which means today saw almost 1000 words of novel work.

Wheeee......

BAD MOVIE BOOK HAPPINESS

For all my fellow bad movie lovers out there, let me be the first to urge you to get your hands on the newly released The Official Razzie Movie Guide: Enjoying The Best of Hollywood's Worst by John Wilson, creator of the Razzie Awards. I picked up a copy at the Edith Cowan University campus in Mt Lawley yesterday, and I haven't stopped laughing since.

There are so many movies I need to watch now. Chesh, Martin, you up for a marathon? :)

YOU'RE A HARD CHILD TO BARGAIN WITH, ERIN BATTERSBY

ERIN: Old Macdonald had a farm, ee-eye-ee-eye-oh, and on that farm he had aaaa.....?
LYN: Camel!
ME: Whale!
ERIN: What about a sheep?
LYN: No, a dolphin!
ME: A monkey!
ERIN: What about a sheep?
LYN: A rhinoceros!
ME: Yeah, a rhinoceros!
ERIN: (Much aggrieved) Fine then. A Nossuh-os. (Pause) With a baa baa here...

Song abandoned due to laughing parents crashing the car and killing us all....

OH GOD, WHY DO THESE QUESTIONS OCCUR TO ME?

If you laugh during a golden shower, does it come out your nose?

BECAUSE I AM A HORRIBLY SELF-INDULGENT FATHER WITH TIME ON MY HANDS

Short, cute, and both behaving at the same time for once...

NORMAL SERVICE WILL BE RESUMED AS SOON AS I WORK OUT WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON AROUND HERE

Big word up to the fabbo Martin Livings for rescuing my blog after it decided to show only the blank backing for the last couple of days.

I've managed to rediscover my message board. All that remains is my list of links. Bear with me: I'll throw them up as quickly as I remember who the hell I had up there. Of course, if you want to be linked, now would be a good opportunity to tell me.

THE KIND OF PAIN ONLY A NOTTINGHAM FOREST FAN KNOWS

We're going to be relegated.

Again!

INTERVIEWS ARCHIVED

How cool: Ben Peeks' interviews have been archived here for the education and entertainment of future generations of alien archaeologists.

I'm quite chuffed at the thought, actually.

Check it out: the cover to my collection, by the groovy Cat Sparks. Good, innit?

ON STORIES, AND THE STORIES BEHIND THE STORIES, AND THE STORIES BEHIND THE STORIES BEHIND...

Deborah Biancotti started an interesting discussion lately, about whether writers and other artists do their best work while hungry or 'living on the edge'. This prompted Stephen Dedman to post a fascinating list of tales behind some of his most successful pieces So stuff it. I thought I'd do the same.

SILK I wrote this story on a dare: Heather Gent posted the guidelines for the All-Star Zeppelin Adventure Stories anthology to a mailing list and dared me to work something up. For 5 months I didn't have an idea in my empty head. Then the Monday of the Friday it was due I woke up with the entire thing complete in my mind. Five drafts in four days and it was off. An example of transcription rather than true writing. The only part of the published story that wasn't in the dream is the black-painted trees, and I found those in the first 30 seconds of the only 5 minutes of research I did.

FATHER MUERTE AND THE THEFT Believe it or not, directly inspired by GK Chesteron's Father Brown stories (which is also why the stories are all titled Father Muerte And...) and his fabulous collection The Club of Queer Trades. I just ran things through my kitchen-sink filter and threw everything I could at the concept until it creaked, fell over, and turned into the kind of rublle I make stories out of. But if you look closely enough, a lot of the central conceits are there in this story. The influence is strong here. Thankfully, the following tales in the series move much more strongly towards an individual voice.

MOMENT What everyone thinks of as my "Poor Lee and his dead wife story", but what I consider to be one my cleverest market identification moments. Written specifically for the second Consensual collection, I identified that most of the tales in the first book were on the harder edge of erotica and set out to pen something as gentle and melancholy as possible. There's nothing more beautiful than lovemaking between two people who love each other, and nothing more heartfelt than letting go of someone you love. Simple as that.

MAKING TWO FISTS Written in response to a Dave Luckett post on a mailing list, in which he said that he couldn't understand why anybody wanted to read depressing noir tales. I hadn't written one at that stage, so I sat down to try. This is also the story that saved my career after my 1st wife died: it was unfinished when she died, and it was the last story she read, and the submission period closed less than a month after she died. The thought that her last story might go unpublished forced me to get off my bed and finish it.

PATER FAMILIAS One of my triptych of stories concerned with losing a wife during childbirth, this time surrounding a notion that facinated me the moment I read of it whilst doing research for another story: craniotomies. One of those occasions where an idea lodges in your head and won't leave until you write it out.

BRILLIG Back in 1989 I wrote a half-enquiry half-fan letter to Algis Budrys regarding the Writers Of The Future competition, and received a letter and signed book in reply. This story was a film script at the time. I kept much of the format and non-linear structure, rejigged it into story form, and sent it in. It got nowhere, but 13 years later I found it in a desk drawer, reworked it, and sold it to EOTU ezine, just in time to head to LA for the WOTF workshops and tell people the tale.

TALES OF NIREYM A story about my fathering fears, my fears about a daughter's place in the world, and an attempt to write a straight fantasy with a strong female character, prompted by a comment from one of my WoTF alumni along the lines of "Fantasy stories with women characters always end up being anaemic and unfocussed." Meh. I don't like the guy all that much anyway :) To see who inspired the story, and who it's really about: read 'Nireym' backwards :)

THROUGH THE WINDOW, MERRILEE DANCES My anti-phantasy story. Prompted by a postcard, of all things, with a somewhat crappy art-nouveau picture of a dancing girl upon it, limbs all out of proportion and stare like a Valium zombie. Anyone who knows me even slightly is aware of my rabid hatred for pale Phat Phantasy stories, and cheerful-hobbit-sidekick stories, so this was an attempt to insert a bit of real life mud and grime into a fantasy setting. Even the people who like this one don't want to spend much time in its world :)

ECDYSIS Written in 24 hours on a pool deck in LA during the Writers Of The Future workshops in 2002, including the 3 hours allowed to me for research. Workshop convenor Tim Powers made us do the whole thing ass-backwards: start with an object (in my case, 4 quarters), do the research and see where it leads you, then work out what the story will be about. It's a great exercise for taking you out of your comfort zone. It's also the story that helped bring Lyn and I together: she bought it for her issue of ASIM, and I asked her to lunch. The stupidest writer in the world: starts sleeping with the editor after she buys the story :)

CARRYING THE GOD Inspired by an article in National Geographic on anhydrobiosis (the ability of certain plants to snap-freeze themselves until revived by the presence of water), it was a small step to ask "What if humans...?" The main story seemed a bit slight, so I added a post-apocalyptic storyline, and alternated between the two. Funnily, reading the story recently, I realised that the post-apocalyptic stuff is by far my favourite of the two storylines. The idea of genetically advanced arachnids worshipping a sentient human mummy just appeals to me, I guess...

I WANNA WEAR A DRESS AND A STUPID HAT!

If I am elected, my pope name will be: Pope Heinous Billy VII What's your pope name?Name:

BECAUSE ANYONE WHO IS A SERIOUS CANDIDATE FOR POPE HAS TO BE AN ARSEHOLE OF COSMIC PROPORTIONS

http://peterdavid.malibulist.com/archives/002791.html

Benedict the Umpteenth, ppppphhhhhhh.

Wanker. Because electing right wing Germans to posts of international power has worked so well in the past...

THE PACIFIER

Sucks more than any movie has any right to suck. This film is nothing more than the end result of executive bunnies deciding that any movie with Baldy Vin in it is going to sell by the trailer load. Unfortunately, on the basis of the full house I was surrounded by (and the fact that 3 kids and a wife had managed to drag me screaming and protesting into the theatre in the first place), they're right.

I would rather contract cancer than ever see this movie again.

ON A BRIGHTER NOTE

I wrote most of the epilogue to Nouvelle Hollande today. A small scene to finish it, and spending a few thousand words on the climax, and the thing is done!

I have a couple of agents waiting, so this is a very good thing. Also a priority.

DOES YOUR 3 YEAR OLD WATCH TOO MUCH DOCTOR WHO?

I have a foot-high model of the TARDIS on my computer desk, that the kids gave me for Brianmas. It's been there since Brianmas. It's not hidden behind anything.

Erin comes barrelling up to me yesterday, points dramatically at the model, and exclaims "Daddy! It's Doctor Who's house!"

I think she was disappointed when a teensy tiny little Tom Baker didn't emerge to say hi.

HOW MUCH DOES SHE LOVE ME?

I am a Spike Milligan fan of the first order. I am a Spike Milligan fan to a degree that would frighten your children.

For no reason at all, Luscious presented me ith a copy of Spike Milligan: The Biography the other day.

I've barely climbed out of it since.

She loves me :)

She didn't even wince when I played The Goon Show to the boys in the car yesterday and they decalred it the funniest thing they've ever been exposed to. And I have so many episodes to play them...

AIDEN AIDEN AIDEN, OY OY OY!

Aiden had his first game of soccer on the weekend. He's not a hugely sporty kid, and while we love and support him, all we hoped for was that he didn't hate it too much.

Dude, he can play! He's not the quickest, and he'll take some kicking practice, but he can play. He has an understanding of what he needs to do, and his reading of the play is really good. He's got a soccer brain, something you can't really teach.

And we won 4-2. And quiet little Lyn went off her face. And he set up the last goal. And he wore the Nottingham Forest top we bought him with pride during the practice session, even when surrounded by kids wearing Arsenal, Real Madrid, and Manchester United tops.

Next game's in two weeks, and 2 weeks after that and 2 weeks after that.

We're there with bells on. I'm just a big, fat, hairy proud soccer Bonus Dad :)

STEPHEN DEDMAN ASKS......

1. Had you submitted any other stories to WRITERS OF THE FUTURE before winning the prize for 'Carrying The God'?

I'd submitted one about a dozen years before.In those wacky pre-computer days of 1989 I'd read Michaelmas and discovered that Algis Budrys was running the competition. I sent a half-enquiry, half-fan letter, asking for details. In it I jokingly referred to myself as "The world's greatest unpublished 18 year old". I received a handwritten reply, and a signed copy of the first WOTF book, to "Lee Battersby, The World's Greatest Unpiublished 18 year old", from Algis. I had a story in the mail a week later :) I didn't place, but 13 years later I sold a reworked version to EOTU magazine, just in time to relate that story whilst I was in LA for the competition winners' workshops. Sadly, Algis was ill so I wasn't able to meet him in person, but apparently he thought it was lovely. The story, incidentally, was Brillig and is in the collection.

2. Was winning that award the impetus for you deciding to become a full-time writer, or was it one of the many other sales you've made or awards you've received since?

The decision to become a full-time writer had little to do with writing. After my first wife died, I returned to work part-time, as it was all I was able to handle. My 10 years in the Public Service came up a few years later, which meant I could access some super, and I decided that I needed a change of lifestyle. Lyn and I sat down, worked out what money we had coming from various sources, how long it could last, and decided to live like dilettantes for a while. It was a now-or-never kind of thing. We're looking at getting a bit of part-time work again, but I doubt I'll ever return to full-time employment. I'm just not suited to it, emotionally, and my dreams are in another direction. It's too important for me to be surrounded by family and work I can devote my heart to. Writing is the only work I've felt that way about. It might be nice for people who have ambitions to work in Dayjob, but I'd rather live the lifestyle I have than work 40 hours a week.

3. What, in your opinion, would be the ultimate accolade you could receive for a short story?

A Nebula would be nice :) There are signposts to the improvement of my work. I've always said a Tin Duck would be a big thing. To win one I'd have to get past you and Dave Luckett. I'd love to be reprinted in Datlow & Windling's Year's Best, but it seems the longer I write the less I interest them. As tacky as it sounds, I'd be impressed if someone wanted to make a movie from one of my pieces. It would signify that a creator of mass entertainment believes something within my piece can plug into the mass subconscious, which I think is at the heart of what most writers dream of-- to influence as many people as they can. But money's good too :)

4. What's the longest spell of writer's block you've ever endured, and what ended it?

I'm always moaning that I'm blocked, but the truth is that Real Life (tm) has become too big: this year I've written little, but I've had a baby and wedding enter my life, both of which are vastly important. I get round the problem of blockage by having a number of projects going: right now I have a novel, the collection, 3 short stories, judging 2 story competitions, a cartoon series for Swancon 2006’s PRs, and 2 pieces for next year's Swancon art show. If that fails to work, I find myself potting a lot of plants, or painting something, or tie-dying every sock in the house. The urge to create is strong, it's just the avenue that sometimes needs changing.

5. You finish your alternative Napoleon Bonaparte novel, sell it, and sell the film rights. Do you want to write the screenplay, and if not, who should do it? And who do you want to direct?

Hey, finishing this goddamned book would be dream enough! :)

MORE Q&A

Another set of 5, this time from Jonathan Strahan

1. A blank page and endless time stretch out before you, a limitless supply of caffeine is on hand. What story do you tell?

Oh God, where do I start? Firstly, the hundred or so short story ideas I have lined up waiting to be worked upon, the novel I'm currently working on, the other 7 novels waiting to be worked upon, the TV series, the 2 film ideas, the blackmail letters....

The story that most excites me at the moment is an alternative history SF tale about a kamikaze pilot that I'm planning to write in letter form. It's going to necessitate some heavy research into Japanese culture of the time, and I'm turning into a 'weird research' junkie :) It's still a toss-up whether it'll be a short story or whether I can give it enough legs to make it into a novel. I'm really enamoured of the framing tools Mary Shelley used for Frankenstein, where letters form part of the narrative, and the POVs change for each section, so who knows?

2. Given any choice, where does it appear?

On every bookshelf in ze vuuurrrrrllllddd!! Or more realistically, someone at a good US agency picks it up and runs with it. Obviously, as someone who wants to make a living from writing, the bigger the publisher the better, but I'm more interested in finding an agent and publisher with whom I can have a long-term 'marriage'. The career is all.

3. Kafka, Todorevski, Tolkien or Waldrop. Who's the best short story writer in the business, and why?

Ah, trick question. Waldrop is the best, because he's the one closest to the current zeitgeist, the one best placed to assimilate the foci and adaptations of style and content that the short story form has undergone. But for me, of the four, Kafka is perhaps the greatest, because he has the greater ability to reach inside the corners of the human psyche and squeeze, giving his works a profundity that the others don't reach.

4. Best opening line?

Call me Ishmael. (Moby Dick, or The Whale by Herman Melville)

Of my own work, perhaps "I saw three of me standing at a bus stop today" (The Divergence Tree)

5. Which starsign are you?

I have the very rare privilege of being the only person in history, apart from Napoleone Buonaparte, of being born under the sign of Binky The Space Squirrel.

AND A BEN CAME CALLING......

Ben Peek is running a series of interviews with Australian SF people over on his blog. Check it out: it's some seriously fascinating stuff. Luscious has been interviewed, and the sentimental old bucket thought he'd better ask the lesser Battersby a few questions as well.

So my interview will be up in the next day or so, but if you want cheat and read it a bit early, here it is:

1) You're one of the new writers to emerge in the last five years, beginning
in 2001 and amassing an impressive amount of sales within Australia. Now
with your first collection, The Divergence Tree, has there emerged a set of
concerns or themes that you have been focused with? And is one of the hopes
with the collection to push to find an International audience, given that
much of your work has not had the chance to find them so far?

I made a very deliberate decision, early on, to write something substantially different to my last effort each time I sat down at the keyboard. My career, such as it is, seems to have been a succession of 90 degree turns. It'll help me out in the long run, I hope, when I have to release a range of novels to survive. What comes out, when reading 25 or so of the tales in quick succession, is just how much of my work involves loss, and how few happy endings I tend to write. It probably reflects something deep within my own psyche: I am, by nature, cynical and pessimistic. Also, much of my work falls into a category I have trouble defining. It's certainly not science fiction, and it's not traditional fantasy. I think where I'm headed, generally is to a career of weird tales that, even if they bear the trappings of genre, can't escape the writer's need to subvert and twist. Even when I write a traditional fantasy, such as Through the Window Merrilee Dances, the Princess is mentally retarded, the gardener who loves her is a cripple, the royal marriage is a cynical political manoeuvre... it just doesn't come out of the pen straight.

I do want to find an international audience. I want to make a career from writing, not be just one of those guys who published some stories and what happened to him anyway? To do that, it's important to walk upon a world stage. The collection might help, but over the long haul it'll be getting my mug in magazines, getting a US agent, getting novels on bookshelves, all the usual guff, that will be do the job. Certainly, having a collection out helps: I've got 3 agents in the States asking to see bits of my first novel, so who knows?

I look back at some of the sales I've made and feel like I've undersold certain stories, but that's the risk you take when you put something in an envelope. It took me a while to back myself to the point of hitting big markets first. Now that I'm doing it, I expect my appearances in Oz mags to slow a little, because it's going to take longer for stories to come back from overseas, and there's a bigger pool out there in which to submit. But Australia is where I live, where my love lies. I can't envisage a year without having a story in a local magazine. I like the way Sean Williams does things. No matter how big he gets, he is still just Sean, the guy who'll bid $120 for a piece of fan art at a con auction, and who'll give a story to Mitch?. He's still in it for the love of it.

2) With such a prolific output (37 stories in 5 years) do you hold concerns
that, given the size of the Australian scene, you could create an over
saturation?

Well, there's about a gazillion magazines in Australia right now, not counting the well-paying, well-distributed ones (ie: the non-genre ones :) ) Quality is always going to get picked up, sooner or later. If I'm selling, I take it to mean that I'm writing good stories. If I'm writing goods stories, then the hope is that readers are enjoying them. It depends. I'm hardly Stephen Dedman when it comes to being prolific, but I'm no Ted Chiang either. At the moment I'm averaging something like 10 sales a year. There's, what, 6 issues of ASIM, 3 of Borderlands, 3 of Fables, 1 Orb, 1 Agog, 2 of Aurealis (allegedly)... there's an awful lot of pages I'm not filling.

Without wanting to sound bigheaded, if people are sick of seeing my stories, they could always try to writer better ones... Terry Dowling does, and Rob Hood, and Stephen Dedman, and Sean Williams... I'm hardly top shelf yet. The difference is that people above me in the food chain had their time saturating the Oz magazines and have moved upwards to selling predominantly overseas. I know one big name writer, for example, who turned down an invitation to be in Lyn's issue of ASIM because it simply wasn't worth his while appearing in an Australian magazine: it didn't pay enough, didn't get seen by enough of the right people, didn't have a big enough circulation. That's not a criticism of the writer. Far from it. It's a recognition on their part of where their career path lies.

Besides, I've always been fairly open in telling people that the reason I engage in the writing business (as opposed to just writing, which is a different thing) is fame. I love being recognised. I love receiving fan mail. I love to see people reading magazines with my stories in. That happens with Oz magazines. The buzz factor is fun. I bet there's not a dozen people in Australia who've read my story in All-Star Zeppelin Adventure stories, which paid 5 cents a word and came out form a US 'small' publisher, but I know that every story I have in ASIM gets seen by 500 or 600 people. Fame, baby :)

3) What is your critical opinion of the work currently being published?

I think a lot of it is crud. So many stale fantasies and crappy, semi-humorous fuzzy bunny stories. If I see one more story where a teenage girl discovers she is the source of wild magical powers and the true inheritor of a kingdom, with a badly-executed Freudian dragon ride dumped in the middle, I'm going to start climbing water towers.

There are very few writers in this country who push the envelope on a consistent basis. People seem afraid to chance their arm in case they get rejected, which is getting the chicken before the china shop, in my opinion. Writers should be daring editors not to publish the amazing piece of utter bugfuckery they've placed before them. We should be emulating the Waldrops and Besters, not the Jordans and bloody Weiss'. But hey, the path of least effort and all that.

I think the proliferation of magazines is partially to blame. It's relatively easy to get published right now, certainly much easier than it was in the early 90s, for example. I remember reading Aurealis and Eidolon when that was all there was. Now we have enough magazines that we started Ticonderoga Online to publish only one type of story, as does Shadowed Realms, Antipodean, Dark Animus... We're specialising. You can only support that level of specialisation when there are enough markets that writers can take a chance on writing a specialised story, because there are alternative markets if one magazine rejects it. The downside is that most writers try to hedge their bets, and write strictly down the middle of the road.

I do think there are a large number of writers doing the rounds who have developed enough skill to get published by the usual suspects, and have progressed no further. Why try to develop your craft when you can write a half-arsed quest fantasy with a dragon, teenage girl, and comic-relief hobbit, and pick up 25, 30 bucks? These are not writers who are in it for the craft, or the art, or the career. They're people who want to sit around the bar at their local freecon and jaw about what a tosser editor X was because they rejected Floppy The Bunny God, but they sold it to editor Y so ha ha ha. The next Bug Jack Barron or Repent Harlequin, Said The Ticktockman isn't being written by these people. They're too busy writing the next Lord Of The Rings without realising it's already been fucking done.

If the markets suddenly halved, I think a lot of writers would be out on their arse. But the good writers will sell no matter how many markets are out there. Halve the number of magazines and Deb Biancotti will still place. So will Rob Hood, Stephen Dedman, Geoff Maloney, Trent Jamieson. Quality will out.

4) You're dead. You got one of those nice groupies that likes to follow you
and murder your bunnies, and you indulged, and it went real bad. Still,
dead is dead. You go to Heaven (assuming you believe, blah blah) and you see
God. You say?

Heh. Boy, I've seen a lot of funny answers to this one. I'm going to pontificate instead.

I'm an atheist. God does not exist. Religion, as far as I'm concerned, is no more than a crutch, same as alcohol or cocaine. It's a way for people to absolve themselves of responsibility. Organised religion is downright evil. My wife Lyn is a believer, and she has her reasons, and I support her, but it's not enough to make me believe that religion is anything more than comforting fairy tales to keep the badness from the door.

I'll grant that some people need those fairy stories. If I'd suffered the lifetime of abuse that Lyn has, well, I might want something to believe in too. Sometimes the load is too great to bear. But I have respect for those that carry their religion close to themselves and take it out when they need something warm to wrap around them. Turn up at my doorstep on a Sunday morning with a briefcase full of pamphlets and I'll feed you to the squirrels, whether you bow down to the big Charlton Heston impersonator in the sky or Binky The Sun Gopher.

5) Favourite swear word?

I've been swearing a rather long time. I tend to use it like punctuation. As Billy Connolly says, it doesn't matter how large my vocabulary gets, I still prefer to use 'fuck'. These days I often run them together. Hurting myself generally gets a 'jesusshitfuckcuntshitcuntfuckSHIT'. My long term fave, however, is "JesusssssufferingFUCK". To get the effect right you have to hiss it through clenched teeth and make the words as short as possible.

Polysyllabic cursing, Ask for it by name :)


Let the hate mail begin...

IMHO

Get across to Lyn's Review Blog IMHO and read a brand-new review of Shadowed Realms Issue 3.

See what she has to say about a magazine with her husband's work in it...

LITTLE SOD

I decided to give a certain child, who shall remain nameless but is in fact Connor, some nappy-free time (What Luscious and I call tackle-time) while I logged the last post. So I spread out the largest towel we have on the floor next to me, removed his nappy, and lay him down in the centre of the liquid-absorbing material.

Just as I'm finishing the post I look down: he's rolled off the towel and is happily peeing the pee to end all pees right across the floor.

Razzumfrazzummuttermuttergrumblewhere'sthebloodycloth...

THE IRREFUTABLE AND UNDENIABLE LOGIC OF TODDLERS

Had lunch with Mynxii and Callisto the other day. Calli and Erin had this exchange. The roar of laughter that followed made the whole cafe turn to look...

Calli: He's a boy. boys are aliens, aren't they?
Erin: No, Zim's an alien!

Three years old, and a rabid fangrrl already :)

WHAT THE HELL IS HE DOING HERE?

Now, when you're on the lookout for cutting edge, alternative SF, Dymocks is hardly the place to be. No room amongst all those Dragonlance abortions, and books with the word Wars or Trek splashed out across their covers in an attempt to attract the pathetic creatures who consider that tripe SF.

So how big a bookgasm did I have when I found a solitary copy of Ted Chiang's Stories Of Your Life And Others there the other day, nestled in between the latest Stephen Donaldson snorefest and something by a Star Wars 'author'?

Needless to say, it's where it belongs now. My bookshelf.

THE CURRENT INTERVIEW MEME, WITH ANSWERS

1. Leave me a comment saying, "Interview me."
2. I will respond by asking you five questions. I get to pick the questions.
3. You will update your livejournal/website with the answers to the questions and leave the answers as comments here (or at least provide a pointer to your site).
4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the same post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.

Them's the rules, so here are the answers to the 3 interviews I've given so far:

From Grant Watson:

1. Hollywood reverses the truckful of money up to your house and signs you to write a remake of any existing film you want. Which film? Why?

Oh good, start with the easy ones.... shit. Um, gee, buggered if I know. I'm so against remakes. They make me ill. You know that, you bugger. All right. How about Angels with Dirty Faces? I think we've got some actors that could do it justice. Or The Cabinet of Dr Caligari? Mmm, now that could be fun.

2. Which is honestly harder: being a single parent or being two parents of five kids?

Being a single parent of one kid, I think, given the emotional circumstances. I was thrown into the deep end of teenager parenting when I met Lyn, but then, I had Lyn, and that's the big difference: someone around to support, help, guide, and second-guess me makes all the difference. I still suffer enormous doubts about my ability as a parent: I see all the problems with Erin and what I did wrong, but Lyn knows what she's doing.

3. What single publication would you must like to have a story published in?

Year's Best Fantasy & Horror by Ellen Datlow and whoever's replacing Terri Windling. It's kind of a barometer, I guess. I've copped recommended reading list mentions in a couple of previous volumes, and became very depressed this year when I put out some damn good stories (at least, for me) and didn't cop one. Especially given some of the stories that did get mentioned, which I thought weren't up to much at all. But it seems to me that to get the story printed up, well, that would be a sign that I can compete with the big boys.

4. If someone was going to make a movie based on one of your stories, which one would you most like to see?

Easy. The Father Muerte stories. Two have seen print, the third's been sold to Aurealis, and the fourth's in the drafting process. Plus I'm putting ideas away for a novel. It's my favourite stuff to work on, and I have such a visual sense of it all. That's the one, definitely.

5. You have to erase an entire author's work from existence. Which author's body of work do you reluctantly erase?

Reluctantly? Brian Aldiss. One or two fantastic things in the 60s doesn't forgive the tripe he's turned out in the last 20 years. But there are many, many who I'd erase gleefully. Matthew Reilly, Andrew M Greeley, Michael Crichton...

From Martin Livings:

1. You guys host "good movie nights", though it has to be said that one's value of "good" may vary. What's the worst film you've ever seen on recommendation from someone else claiming it was good, and who recommended it?

I refuse to accept any sneering about my definition of 'good' from a guy who hates The Rocky Horror Picture Show! :) However, to answer the question, easily the worst film I've seen on recommendation would be Uurotsakaai (or however the hell you spell it): Legend Of The Overfiend. So bad I didn't watch manga for over another decade. In fact, it wasn't until I became Bonus-Dad to a couple of manga-obsessed boys that I watched some more, and found out what I'd been missing.

2. Your collection The Divergence Tree will be coming up startlingly soon. Which story in it is your favourite, and why?

Gee, that's a hard one. Obviously they're all my favourites, or they wouldn't have made the collection. But of those that are included, Silk would go close, mainly because it was written for a weird market (All-Star Zeppelin Adventure Stories), and in less than a week, and yet is still probably one of my best three stories. And, you know, you don't often get to use the phrase 'haunted time-travelling barrage balloon' in normal conversation...

3. Have you ever published a story that, in retrospect, you've regretted having your name next to? If so, which one, and why?

Off the top of my head, no, although Lyn has a couple she wishes I'd never sold :) But I've learnt a lot about the business each time I've ventured out the front door, and each sale has a story behind it, so no regrets, not really. There are a few I think I've undersold, and a few I think I've placed in the wrong market, but that's a different thing.

4. You're given a Buffy/Faith-style body-swap bracelet, and twenty-four hours in which to use it. Who do you shake hands with?

That depends: If Lyn's around, I shake her hand. If she isn't, I shake Angelina Jolie's hand and then take a very long shower...

5. Some say that loneliness and suffering are essential ingredients in the writing process. Most of the great writers were depressed, miserable and lonely. You, on the other hand, are now happily newlywed, and surrounded by more kids than is really feasible. Is loneliness and suffering necessary for art? Or is this a whole new kind of suffering? ;)

I don't buy that you have to be lonely, miserable, and suffering, no more than I buy the idea that you have to have been on another planet in order to describe it. You do have to be able to tap into the mental space well enough to be able to describe it with enough verisimilitude that the readers understand it. Experience helps, and I have had the black dog periods, but that only enables me, now that I have happiness in my life, to tap into those emotions with some realism on the page.

From Mynxii:

1. What alcoholic cocktail do you enjoy the most (must be a cocktail of some description) and why?

I created one in the 80s called 'The Foetus': vodka, Creme de Menthe and Creme de Cacao, then suspend both red and yellow Advocaat (the thick stuff, not the clear). The two advocaat hang together in a lump, hence the name, and the effect is like being hit with a choc-mint tasting Volvo

2. If you were to have a dinner party with 7 people you wanted to get to know better, that you don't already consider to know well, whom would you invite and why?

Oooh, that's tuff. Howard Waldrop, to get inside the man's talent. Billy Connolly, to get to know on a personal basis someone who's words I've been enjoying most of my life. Rob Hoge and Kate Eltham, because Brisbane is just too damn far away to catch up as often as we should. Danny Oz, because Melbourne etc etc. Chris Lawson, because I have such damn respect for the man's work. And Tim Powers, because I've enjoyed his company each time we've met, find him a thoroughly engaging person, and have lost his forged Virgil Findlay signature :)

I've not included anybody local, coz, you know, I could always just pick up the phone...

3. What is your favourite line in the story you least expected to like and why?

Gee, I don't know. There's an aspiring poet at one of Lyn's writing groups who specialises in writing horrible, unreadable, tetchy little pieces about people she knows. But a wee while ago she wrote something called Kneeling in Dry Grass, with Roses which was an attempt to get inside the mind of one of the victims of the Claremont Serial killer, just before she died. It blew me away: surreal, dangerous, and hard. I can't remember any individual line, but I do remember sitting there thinking "fuuuuucccckkkkk..."

4. If you ended up in a drag club as a drag queen doing a performance - what diva would you impersonate and why?

Based on body shape, I think I could only get away with Divine :) But for comedy purposes, I'd go with Gwyneth Paltrow's performance in Duets. Because she's a crap actress, and deserves it :)

5. If you were to take over the world as an evil dictator, aside from purging the stupid people, what would your following three acts of power be?

Geez, there'd be so few of us left! Abolish organised religion, I think. If there's been anything more consistently evil over the course of human history, I've yet to discover it.

DOCUMENTARY EVIDENCE

Anyone get any photos or footage of our wedding? If so, could you contact us? We'd love to organise some copies.

A POST FOR THE PURPOSES OF TALKING UP MY BRILLIANT WIFE

Look at what The Internet Review of Science Fiction said about a certain Luscious wife's story in ASIM 17:

It doesn't get much darker than this.

Triffitt imagines a not-too distant future in which America's death penalty practices are out of control. Not only do we murder the murderers, but we make them pay for their crimes as well. That's right, we animate the corpses and set them to manual labor.

Best to read this in the tradition of zombie stories, rather than as science fiction. Because aside from the particulars of animation, which I am afraid Triffitt spends a bit too much time trying to rationalize, this is a very compelling, scary story.

(big snip in which the reviewer tells us the entire plot of the story)

The grimmest part of this tale, and where Triffitt shows the most sensitivity, is in the girl's realization of and reaction to her fate. (another story-giving-away snip) It's a well-written and touching conclusion.

Not bad, eh?