A FIRST, TINY TASTE OF ANTIMONY

           When your first name is a poison, and your last name is a way of making people throw up, you have two choices: you can rebel against it, and become the sweetest, loveliest child in the world, or you can be evil.

            Antimony Lavage was evil. 

-- The Dreadfully Deadly Plans of Antimony Lavage.

Here's how it works:

1. Sign up for Nanowrimo.
2. Start working on your next adult novel. Have a title. Have a rough plot worked out.
3. Write 12 000 words.
4. Listen to Luscious Lyn read the first part of her new kids novel, The Adventures of Treckie Travers, to the family.
5. Go to bed.
6. Fall asleep.
7. Wake up with the entire plot of your new kids novel in your head and be unable to think of a bloody thing until you've actually got the beginning on paper.

And that's how it's done.

Review: LEGO Space: Building the Future

LEGO Space: Building the Future by Peter Reid

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



I'll admit that this book wasn't what I imagined when I ordered it: rather than a collection of instructions, model images and building tips by committed veteran Lego Space MOCers Peter Reid and Tim Goddard, it is, instead, a fictional 'future history' of Earth's space exploration, illustrated with some quite beautiful Lego models and sprinkled with a small number of instructions for building the smallest and most easily assembled designs used within the story. That's no bad thing-- expectations can easily be inverted, or indeed, exceeded, by the surprise of discovery.

The book is presented as a fictional narrative, highly reminiscent of the range of illustrated speculative fact books I remember growing up with in the 1970s, beginning with a short history of Terran space travel from Sputnik to the modern day, then continuing into an increasingly speculative and space operatic future, moving father and farther off-planet, via the Moon, Mars, the moons of Jupiter, and eventually, into deep space. It is sprinkled with occasional side-stories, revolving around significant technological developments, before the mockumentary style is supplanted by a character-based story of attempted alien invasion and pitched battle that finishes the book. Creating a narrative around builds, particularly those in a series such as the ones presented within this book, is an integral part of the MOC-building experience for many AFOLs. And this is, really, where the book falls short.

The pictures themselves, and the MOC models they depict, are gorgeous, and there's plenty of enjoyment to be had for an average Lego builder like me in scrutinising each design as it is presented and attempting to decipher the techniques Reid and Goddard have used to create them faced with little more than images of the final work. AFOLs will get some delight in spotting the numerous naming in-jokes and respectful nods of the head to past Lego Space themes such as Ice Planet, Mission to Mars and Blacktron, and there's plenty to be learned about diorama design and photography techniques, just by studying the images on each page. But the story that Reid and Goddard have constructed around the images is uninspired: simple; cliched; the sort of thing that might serve for hobbyists pinning together an armature on which to hang their models but not to sustain narrative interest throughout a book of decent length. It lacks a coherent structure: moving from mock history to personalised biographies of 'characters' to small scale space opera and back again without direction, and with a brevity and lack of vision that does not reward repeated readings.

Had this been a coffee-table book, highlighting the images and builds alone, with technical instructions and insights into the builders behind the models, it would have been a stunning work. As a showpiece for Reid and Goddard's brilliant creations, it's a gorgeous book I'll dip into time and again to research parts use and building techniques. But as a combination of story and image, it falls too short on the storytelling for me to want to *read* it again, and I'll most likely gift it to my eight year-old, who will love the images and not have the SF-reading experience that makes him start flicking through the story to spend more time with the pictures.






View all my reviews

THUMBNAIL THURSDAY LINES UP

Here's another one I got as far as pencilling up and lining properly, just to prove that as far as being a cartoonist goes, I'm a decent writer.

Not being able to get people right is just the teeeeeeeeeeeeensiest tiniest little flaw when it comes to cartooning, don't you think?

Review: Get Shorty

Get Shorty by Elmore Leonard

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



Entertaining, funny, tongue-in-cheek collision of the twinned fraudulent worlds of the small time hood and the small time Hollywood hanger-on, with a menagerie of only partially self-aware characters in the best Leonard tradition. It's a romp in the grand old fashion, and it's easy to see why this was such a hit as a movie-- Hollywood loves nothing more than proving it's hip to its own faults, and Leonard's acerbic take on the grimy, desperate world that springs up in the shadows of the mega-studios is so pitch perfect that it made for prime movie material.

As always with Leonard's work it's the characters who provide more enjoyment than the cast-iron plot, and Chili Palmer and his cohorts are some of the best he's created, particularly the divine comic creature Harry Zimm. The book would be worth it for the interplay between the characters alone, but Leonard's narrative of bored loan shark using his old tricks to find a home in the B-movie business rolls along at a cracking pace, with humorous delights on every page. It's rollicking fun, pitch perfect in tone and intent, and an utter joy to read.



View all my reviews

IF LIFE BEGINS AT 40, WHY AM I 43 AND HAVE NO LIFE?

So, I'm 43 now, and it's weird, but I don't feel any wiser then I did when I was 42.

Actually, it was a good turning, this year. For a start, the day of my birthday fell on my RDO, so, you know, free day off. I was gifted up the wazoo-- a massive Lego set from Luscious and the kids and the 4-DVD box set of Sealab 2021 from Aiden, which pretty much covers my geekdom from front to back so I was a happy fat man. And I was the victim of a surprise birthday lunch attended by several friends, so I ended the weekend feeling like a suitably pampered and satisfied birthday boy: my thanks to Kris & Kim McMinn, Stephen Dedman and Lily Chrywenstrom for coming down to the Batthaim and making my afternoon such an enjoyable one. And thanks to my darling wife and beautiful children for reminding me that they're sneaky bald-faced liars who can't be trusted.... but lovely ones, who are good to me. :)

Multiply 9 by 14, divide by 9.14, add 9, subtract 14, multiply by some other number and take away some stuff, and it's suitable for age 43!

Professionally, I don't know what to make of my life. I'm at the best day job I've ever had, but, well, it's still a day job, and when it comes down to it, I begrudge anything that takes me away from Luscious and the kids, and equally begrudge anything that takes me away from the one thing I want to do with my life, which is to build this writing career I thought I'd have by now. I resent work when I'm writing because it takes me away from that writing, and when I'm not writing I resent it because it's the block that stands between me and the writing I should be doing.

And right now, I'm doing a bunch of writing. Having signed up for Nanowrimo again this year I've managed just under 8000 words on Canals of Anguilar, my latest novel, which isn't Nano speed but it's 8000 more words than I managed in October, so it's doing what it needs to do. And while I can't reveal details until contracts are finalised and formal announcements are formally announced, I've been invited to present a workshop at a pretty damned decent writer's festival in 2014 and I've sold Magwitch and Bugrat, so you can officially add "children's author" to my list of crimes against humanity. All in all, despite feeling like I'm betwixt and between in my writing career, I'm making some advances which-- I'd like to think-- are going to take me further afield than the small genre pond in which I've been swimming so far.

All in all, 43 is not a bad place to be so far.

So, for the moment, work will continue apace. Between now and 44, I'll complete Father Muerte & the Divine and Canals of Anguilar and send them off to Agent Rich, and I'm itching to get my teeth into a crime novel, so I'd like to be well into the wordage on one by this time next year. And if I'm going to be a children's author I'd better do that properly, too, so let's say I'll have another kid's novel under my belt as well. The artists who fascinate me-- and who I've most wanted to emulate-- are polymaths, and while adult novels/children's novels is hardly the spread of talent to match the 'trumpeter/actor/poet/comedy God' skill set of Spike Milligan or David Bowie's 'musician/actor' oeuvre, it's what I've managed to score so far so I'd best make the most of it.

That's an awful lot of writing, especially as we continue to deal with master 8's illness and the range of issues that come with cramming a family of 5 into a ginormous house on a single wage, but what am I going to do? I'm two years away from the goal I set myself when I got into this game-- writing full-time by the age of 45-- and while I'm prepared to adjust that goal I'm not resigned to doing so. All I can do is get on with it.

And while I'm wishing, I'd like a unicorn...

NANOFF WE GO

November 1st. First day of Nanowrimo.

Here's the widget :)

NANOTWOMO

Well, I've done it: I've signed on to Nanowrimo again for another year. This year's project is officially Canals of Anguilar, the fantasy novel set in a city entirely populated by cowards I've mentioned earlier, but there's likely to be some switching going on-- I've just started a mainstream project with the alluring and sexy title of Killer Thing (pick the title in progress...) and I'll be wanting to throw some words down on that one while the impetus is still fresh.

Working on two projects is allowed, right?

Anyway, come along and join me if you're as novelling sort, and feel free to buddy me up. I'm not fussy: I'll be friends with anyone who smiles at me the right way :)

(raises glass). Here's to words.

THUMBNAIL THURSDAY ACCEPTS CANDY FROM STRANGERS

One for the fancy-dressed sugar addict in all of us on Candy From Strangers Celebration Day.

"Excuse me? Do I come to your house on your special day and demand candy from you?"

HI-HO, AWAY WE GO.

Every City, no matter how beautiful, has a corner into which the shit floats.

And so it begins: a new project.

There's something energising about hitting upon the right beginning. I've been in a slump lately, bereft of ideas, searching for artificial ways to stimulate my creative energies, worried that I had, perhaps, exhausted my ideas and really was now nothing more than a low-level art administrator. It happens. Some of the best writers out there hit a point where they've simply told all the stories they have within them, and walk away. Witness Harper Lee. Witness EM Forster.

Of course, what is always apparent, once I've passed through it, is that I was in my sponge phase: lying dormant, letting the waters sweep over me, filtering out the salt and the nutrients from the jet stream. And then I slap on the saddle and the family bunker down and prepare themselves for another 6 months of me being a grumpy bastard, or at least, a slightly differently grumpy bastard.

It always happens like this. I always forget that this is how it happens. I always have that moment of panic, that moment of despair, and then that moment of sullen acceptance. And that's always when the spark hits.

In this case: in the car, on my way to work, out of nowhere. Just that first line, and the knowledge of where it fits.

The Canals of Anguilar. A short story that I wrote for the lovely Kate Eltham and the Review of Australian Fiction. 8000 words long, and yet I was never satisfied with it, never happy that I'd told the whole story. Because I hadn't, and it was that single line, out of nowhere, that made me realise it. It's a good story, don't get me wrong: I only submit when I'm convinced I have something good, and doubly so for Kate.

But it's going to be a better novel. Deeper, wider, with the stories I wanted to tell but was only able to hint at because of the compressed length. The short story is my synopsis, my outline. The novel doesn't begin where it begins, it won't end where it ends, but it is the blueprint for what I want to write to make me happy with the idea. After which I will descend into the sullen belief that  have exhausted all my ideas and really have nothing left to say as an author. Again.

Away we go.

THUMBNAIL THURSDAY IN THE MIDDAY SUN

"Terrible news, cabron. The mad dogs have eaten the Englishmen."

Well, you would, wouldn't you?

ONE, ONE DECADE, AH AH AH.....

Well, goodness me. Something happened last week and I've only just noticed.

As of last Thursday, I've been Battersblogging for ten years. Ten years! I've had careers haven't lasted that long!

10th October 2003, I started this journal of... whatever it is I do here... with Okay, a new blog, just to chock up the internet with more pointless waffle of the "My name's Persephone, I'm 8 years old, here's a poem about my cat" variety... and ten years later, I think I've accomplished exactly that.

1230 posts, a gnat's willy shy of 140 000 visitors, two novels, a swathe of short stories, a marriage, a child, 4 houses, as many cars, a grandchild, somewhere in the region of a dozen conventions, half a dozen jobs and a whole lot of whatever the hell it is I do here later, and I find myself still blogging, with the Battersblog archived at the National Library and the very distinct possibility that this will be my testimony to the ages, and not the stuttering career as a minor author I have turned into along the way.

Such is life. Such is life in the electronic age.

So, if you've been around for any length of time, thanks for ploughing through my shite year after year, and if you're a recent arrival, enjoy the shite. And if anyone can work out whatever it is that I do do here... keep it under your hat :)

BLOOD SPLATTER, KIDNAPPING, AND OTHER HARMLESS WEEKEND PURSUITS

Sometimes, you just have to renew your writer-fu.

The Luscious one and I spent this last weekend in the crimelicious surrounds of CrimeScene WA, the annual crime writers convention at the Rydges hotel, where we spent our time drenching our third eyes in the minutiae of blood spatter analysis, trace evidence, clue trails, and all manner of crimey-wimey goodness. The conveners presented a stunning lineup of subject experts, including the lies of Professor Simon Lewis, Dr Mark Reynolds and Hadyn Green, and the depth and styles of their presentations left those of us who contributed to the writer stream looking a little like shambolic amateurs: their professionalism and skill was astonishing, and quite honestly, made my own contribution to the running order (participation in a critiquing panel with Juliet Marillier and Alisa Krasnostein) a slightly disheartening experience. 

Writing panel: Marianne de Pierres, Stephen Dedman and Robert Schofield talk settings, Australian locales, and why Kalgoorlie trumps Macau.

Apart from an opportunity to spend a weekend in a delightful hotel with my beautiful wife, and to catch up with some friendly faces we hadn't seen in a while, highlights of the weekend included stunning presentations on the identification of trace evidence and the science of blood splatter analysis, a presentation on the chronology of the Lindbergh kidnapping that was so arresting the audience gladly gave up our lunch hour to finish it when the flood of questions forced the presentation over time, a hypothetical wherein the guest speakers revealed how they would kill each other-- and Humphrey B. Bear-- and make it look like an accident, and a presentation on professionalism by Marianne de Pierres that brought home to me just how I'd allowed my discipline and well-being to slip in recent months.

I love these 'how to' presentations: Hadyn Green talks the audience through the Lindbergh kidnapping.

Luscious and I have returned home with renewed zeal for our careers: now that Master 8's Rumination Syndrome is being managed with a long-term strategy, and Miss 11's breathing problems have been diagnosed as bronchial asthma and she's receiving the proper management, Lyn is able to put serious effort into her desire to move her career away from speculative fiction and towards crime-- part of the reason we attended the convention was to enable her to do some groundwork, and Marianne de Pierres is a particular inspiration-- and I've walked away with a renewed sense of purpose towards not only my works in progress but the direction I want to steer my career towards.

CrimeScene was an absolutely fantastic convention: intimate, well-balanced between industry and writing expertise, friendly, and with an open and transparent duty of care towards the attendees, presenters and hotel (the convention's harassment policy, for example, was not only clearly articulated but displayed in several high-profile areas; something I've rarely seen at other cons). It's been a long time since I've enjoyed a convention so much that I've chatted to the conveners about my plans for next year while the convention was still running, but I certainly did so here.

I can't wait for 2014.

INTERVIEW: JONATHAN K. BENTON

Jonathan Benton left Auckland University before completing a BA in English Literature and History because of a burning desire to see the world. A qualified PADI Dive-master, he spent a year working in Fiji. Then he moved to England, where he rambled the countryside for several years chasing myths and legends. Before returning to New Zealand, he stopped off in Australia; twelve years later, he is still here. Jonathan likes adventure. He has driven from Sydney to the tip of Cape York with a homemade plywood boat, which his friends then sailed across the Torres Strait. He has sailed from Sydney to Forster/Tuncurry and back, and has spent time in the Northern Territory researching factual details for a forthcoming novel. The youngest of three siblings, Jonathan likes arts and entertainment, sports and leisure, and all the other categories on the Trivial Pursuit board.

I interviewed Jonathan about his new novel, A Wicked Kind of Dark.

Robert Duncan no longer believes in magic. A mysterious call about a blood moon, however, leads him back to the magical world of his childhood and to Luthien, the beautiful girl with flame-coloured hair, whom he loved and lost. As Robert unravels the secrets of his childhood, darkness enters his life and an ancient evil awakens. To have any chance of defeating the dark forces that would destroy two worlds, Robert must find Luthien before the rise of the blood moon. He must, once more, believe in magic. A Wicked Kind of Dark mixes vast and spectacular fantasy landscapes with gritty urban reality. A must-read for people of all ages who believe in the power of imagination, and the importance of never losing touch with your inner child.

A Wicked Kind of Dark seems focused on the theme of duality: two worlds, two possible futures, two directions in which your hero Robert Duncan can travel. How important is this idea of duality to you as a writer?

Duality highlights the importance of choice, something I’m extremely passionate about having dealt with addiction. Sometimes people, like the character Robert in A Wicked Kind of Dark, feel there is no choice. There’s always a choice. We simply need to be shown.

The figure of Luthien seems to embody a sense of loss and the chance to recover lost things. 

We all experience traumatic events like the loss of a loved one. It’s unrealistic to believe these events don’t stay with us. Developing tools to overcome adversity helps build a pathway to long-term happiness. Robert must learn this important lesson if he is to have any chance of regaining what he has lost.

How important was it for you to imbue the fae world of Minaea with a believable, logical magic system? Is it necessary, in your opinion, for the rules of magic to make sense in our non-magical world?

If a fantasy world is not comprehensible, then it won’t flourish outside the author’s imagination. This is something all fantasy writers must consider.

You've blogged about your decision-making process when it came to creating your antagonist, the dark fae lord Jakal. How difficult is it to create an antagonist with sympathetic motivations? Is it easier to create someone whose motivations are simply the 180 degree opposite of the hero, or should there be at least some small sense of identification for the reader?

It depends on the story. The creature ‘It’ in Stephen King’s book of the same name is a wonderful antagonist that has no sympathetic motivations whatsoever. The book would be weakened if ‘It’ was a tortured soul doing bad things for the right reasons. Pure evil still has a place in literature. While there are suggestions in A Wicked Kind of Dark that Jakal has sympathetic motivations, the book focuses on Robert beating his internal demons, so that he can defeat the ‘real’ ones.  And the real ones ain’t nice!

The image of the blood moon is the initiating trigger for the narrative of the novel. How important is symbolism to you as an author? Do you use symbols consciously, or is it something that comes out of the writing process?

Symbolism is a powerful literary tool – often subtle, always poetic, and inevitably thought-provoking. I love the moods an effective symbol creates. The moon, for example, is naturally mysterious. A blood moon takes that mystery and adds a dash of darkness and foreboding. This is intentional.

What should readers expect from A Wicked Kind of Dark? Give me your best PT Barnum pitch! :)

A Wicked Kind of Dark celebrates the power of the imagination, using explosions of high fantasy in an otherwise familiar urban setting to reinforce this theme. As 17-year-old Robert Duncan reconnects with his childhood, his perception of London changes from a grey, lifeless city to a city full of magic and miracles.  Literary fantasy novels like A Wicked Kind of Dark treat words as preciously as the plot. While the book is written for young adults (11 to 15-year-olds), adults who loved Enid Blyton, Tolkien, C S Lewis and J M Barrie will enjoy my classical writing style.

Are there any future stories in the Minaea Chronicles on the drawing board? If so, what can readers expect?

The feedback I’m getting is that readers love the high fantasy world in A Wicked Kind of Dark – Minaea is conceptually strong and people want to know more about it. My next book will introduce a new set of characters based in Australia (not the UK this time) and Minaea. The first draft is complete. I’ve always planned to do it this way. It keeps things fresh. Too often I see undercooked sequels because nothing new has been added to the mix. 

A Wicked Kind of Dark is available now via Odyssey Books.

WIBBLY WOBBLY CRIMEY WIMEY

Off to Crime Scene WA tonight, for two days of immersion in everything I'll need to know to commit the perfect murder write within a genre I love but which I've never attempted as an author before. I'll only be on one panel over the weekend-- a critiquing panel with Alisa Krasnostein and Juliet Marillier-- and the rest of the time I intend to soak up as much information on blood spatter and art theft and DNA analysis and the like as I can.

You can check out the programme here, and five gets you ten you can still get memberships and come along. It's shaping up to be a lot of fun.

IT COULD BE YOU: THE ETCHED CITY BY KJ BISHOP

The great thing about an anthology of the mind is that you're not limited to any one form of writing. It takes as much effort to reprint a novel as it does a haiku, because it's allllllll in your miiiiiiiinnnndddd......

It took me forever to get a copy of KJ Bishop's The Etched City, and for a very good reason: everywhere I went in the wake of its release, the bloody thing had sold out. And when I finally did get a copy, at a convention almost a year after its release, some bugger half-inched the thing. Which is why the copy I do have is one of my prized literary possessions, because Bishop found out about it and sent me a copy from her personal stash as a replacement, and what's more, she went through and annotated it beforehand: I've got one of the few, if not only, post-published draft edits in existence!

What's even better, of course, is that the novel is a stunning piece of work. It's like nothing else I've ever seen published by an Australian author-- lyrical, baroque, with a plot that ascends not in a straight line but in a series of unconnected sweeping circles that don't seem to be going anywhere until, simultaneously, they all do...... perhaps only the equally wonderful Anna Tambour comes close to creating that same sense of the truly lush and exotic, and Bishop does it here in service to one of the great figures of Australian speculative fiction: the gunslinger philosopher Gwynn, of the peacock-eye coat and blanched white countenance, whose louche demeanour is at odds with his troubling inability to fully divest himself of his humanity. Taken alone, his story would be fascinating, but with an equally troubling co-protagonist in the dark medic Raule, and in the beautifully-realised city of Ashamoil, the novel is a feast for the third eye that never stops throwing up images that I find myself pondering long after the reading experience itself has finished.

 At a time when my reading-- and a fair bit of the Australian work that made up that reading-- sat firmly in the standardised American tradition of speculative fiction, it was a slap upside the head as to just how far an Australian author could go to create a non-standard setting and narrative as long as s/he attacked their work with verve and ambition. The Etched City is one of the very few books that I come back to again and again, especially at times when my own creativity is lagging and I need to touch something to spark the wet wood inside my head: at the time of writing I'm re-reading it once more, for somewhere in the region of the seventh or eighth time.

It really is a wondrous work, and if it's not part of your collection, it should be. You can read an extract here and pick up a copy here. Do so.

THUMBNAIL THURSDAY THROWS MUD IN YOUR EYE

Or a stick. Sticks hurt too.

"Repeat: I have landed on the strange orb, and am now preparing to plant the dedication flag..."

WHERE THERE'S A WILL, THERE'S A WON'T.

Well, I warned you things would be a bit quiet around here for a short while, didn't I?

So let's catch up.

Firstly, health matters are slowly on the improve. Luscious can get out of bed now, as the bed rest and immobility appear to have finally gotten a grip on her condition. Miss 11's asthma is being managed: her birth mother was a chronic asthmatic, and I'm all too familiar with the routines associated with breath testing, puffs, washing of chambers and associated routinery, and Lyn's eldest came close to death when younger from the same condition, so we're both hypersensitive to any changes in breathing pattern, lip colouration, or tingling in the extremities. In other words, we're all over Miss 11 like blankets on a pig. And we continue the hospital trips and juices in support of Master 8, who had had pipes up his nose, down his throat, into his stomach and just about every orifice except his third eye and still maintains a diagnosis of Rumination Syndrome and the best we can do is manage it and hope it goes away.

As always, a change in habit becomes the habit becomes normality: we live our lives around puffers and vomit bags and we keep moving on.

Writing-wise, Marius and Gerd have officially completed their journey, and so I move on to other things: Magwitch and Bugrat is with a publisher, and I'm feeling the itch to write fresh words, which means I really have to shift my arse and complete the editing on Father Muerte and the Divine so I can get it out of my in-tray. I'm desperate to start a new novel by the beginning of November, so expect the odd excerpt from the Muerte work as I renew my acquaintance with phrases I thought I was dead clever for writing when I came up with them and decide to share them with you.

First off the rank for me, however, is a jaunt to the murderous confines of CrimeScene WA, the crime writing convention taking place this weekend, where I'll be co-presenting a critiquing panel with Juliet Marillier and Alisa Krasnostein. Two days of lazing about the hotel, talking shop, expanding my skill set and teasing out the kernel of an idea I have for a crime novel is just the thing I need at the moment: an escape from the pressure of work, an immersion in the world I want to live in full time, and a weekend away with my beautiful wife, it comes at exactly the right time.

Check out the programme here, and head along if you've got a spare day or two: the lineup of speakers looks awesome and anything that teaches you a better way to murder someone can't be all bad, right? I'll pop up a con report after the deal, so you can see what you've missed, but you'd be far better just coming along.

And I'll have another entry in my It Could be You anthology series tomorrow: one of the reasons I've not been blogging is that I've been rereading it, and have once more been lost within it....

MANFLU 2: THIS TIME IT'S TERRIFYING.

Typical, isn't it? As one rises, another falls......

Recently, I blogged about the problems our youngest son has been experiencing with something called Rumination Syndrome, a condition which causes him to vomit in excess of twenty or thirty times a day. It was a post touched with more than a little despair.

About a week ago, a good friend of Lyn's visited for the first time a while, and offered a potential management solution: Lyn's friend has been suffering from cancer, and has responded by 'going raw'- eating nothing but raw food, avoiding anything that has been processed, and eliminating all possible toxins from her system. I'm happy to say that it seems to have been working, but one of the things she mentioned to Lyn was a method of raising the alkali levels of our boy's stomach: a freshly prepared juice of green apples, celery, and mint, with a bit of beetroot every now and again for added flavour.

It was worth a shot. Fuck it, at this point just about anything is worth a shot.

In the last 4 days, his vomiting has decreased to little more than half a dozen times a day. On occasion, we've even managed to get him into bed without having to change his bedding. This, my friends, is a major breakthrough. He still has episodes-- it's possible he'll never not have episodes-- but for the moment we seem to have found a temporary abeyance, and it's enabled us to visit the touring Egyptian exhibition at the museum, travel to the WA Scale Model Expo, and generally travel around town without having to pack a change of clothes and a three-pack of sickbags just to go food shopping.

He can do things like this now.

Which is just as well, because since last Thursday....

Luscious woke up with chest pains on Friday, which became a trip to the doctors, which became an ambulance ride to the hospital with a suspected heart attack after a dodgy ECT result. A terrifying eighteen hours later she was released back into the wild with a diagnosis of muscular spasms so sever that they had affected the ECT monitor, but nonetheless, we've been edgy and clingy ever since: she's still in bed three days later, and any but the simplest of movements leaves her wincing in pain.

And our daughter has turned lung-hacking coughs into a diagnosis of bronchitis, so she's lying on the bed next to her mother watching Pretty in Pink and other assorted girlie movies for the next two to three days at least.

I am, literally, the last Batt standing.

THUMBNAIL THURSDAY LOVES ITS CHILDREN

Sometimes, the best humour has a dark, nasty core.

This is one of those times. Narratively, I love the dichotomy of a close, loving family relationship with the acceptance of deeply disturbed, often psychopathic, behaviour. It's one I use in my fiction on a regular basis, and it's one I think I've captured beautifully well here. I just know that in the final version the room would be spotless, gleaming,and clean: proof that loving Mum has cleaned around the slowly rotting corpse of whomever beloved son has tied to the bed. As psychopathic as the son is revealed to be, the underlying psychosis would be all Mums.

Plus, you know, funny...

"

"We kept your old room jut the way you left it..."

Review: Ugly: my memoir

Ugly: my memoir by Robert Hoge

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



An unflinching, honest, and at times heart-breaking look into the life of a man who overcame more obstacles in his first 5 years of life than many of us would ever expect to conquer. Despite being born with enormous physical disabilities, Robert Hoge transcends them to reveal himself as a warm, benevolent, and most importantly, normal Australian man, with a deep fund of humour and humanity, and a quintessentially laconic take on life inherited from his father Vince, whose presence looms large over this autobiography. It's Hoge's humour and positivity that sustain him through a series of hurdles.

After the heartbreaking opening chapters, where his family, particularly his mother Mary, struggle to come to terms with Robert's disabilities and outward appearance, the narrative quickly settles into a pattern of observation/recognition/acceptance, as a very familiar childhood (especially to any of us who grew up in the 80s) is transfigured by Hoge's openness and precocious warmth, and is reflected back at him from a community that quickly learns to appreciate and assist him.

While not immune from darker moments and passages of bleak reflection, it is this warmth and humanity that, ultimately, give the book its overall tone. It reminded me very much of Albert Facey's 'A Fortunate Life' in its depiction of extraordinary circumstances made ordinary through an unflinching determination to refute the possibility of failure.

Recommended.





View all my reviews

Review: Mary Tudor: Princess, Bastard, Queen

Mary Tudor: Princess, Bastard, Queen by Anna Whitelock

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



A compelling and thoroughly researched biography of a monarch unfairly relegated to the second tier of Tudors, detailing Mary's prodigious struggle to be recognised by both her father and brother, and the unbelievable political and social pressures she was forced to navigate: first as a disinherited and constantly-threatened teenager, and then as a Queen caught between the political grindings of two vast powers whose interests intersected with her religious and political beliefs.

Whitelock's writing is lively and insightful, without deviating too far from verifiable fact. There are no flights of fancy or what-ifs here. Rather, the reader is presented with a plethora of written and recorded accounts, correspondences, and edicts that lay out her arguments with clarity and observable effect, tallied in a voice that makes the progression through Mary's tumultuous life an enjoyable window into the life of a woman torn in numerous directions at every step and never allowed the luxury to be that which she most wanted to be: a married Christian woman with the love of husband and children around her. Whitelock's summation, that by Mary's own standards she had 'failed as a woman but succeeded as a Queen' emphasise the essential dichotomy of the Tudor monarchy, and where Whitelock succeeds is in showing the reader how much of that dichotomous failure is down to the Tudors themselves.

Excellent reading. Thoroughly recommended.



View all my reviews

CAN'T ANYBODY IN MY FAMILY JUST GET FUCKING MANFLU?

First my wife dies of an infection that was, quite literally, a one-in-a-million occurrence.

Then my mother, after a ten year battle with three different types of cancer, finally falls victim to GANT, a type of cancerous tumour so rare there had been less than 50 recorded cases in the US when she was diagnosed, and that delay in diagnosis was a significant factor in her inability to combat it. (Yesterday would have been her 72nd birthday. So it goes.)

More recently, my father is diagnosed with Primary Progressive Aphasia, a somewhat obscure form of lobar degeneration resulting in a loss of linguistic ability and semantic dementia.

About four months ago, our youngest son started throwing up. Twenty, thirty, sometimes more than forty times a day. Every day. From the moment he woke up to the moment he fell asleep. He hasn't been able to go to school. He can't swim at the beach or the pool the way he loves to. We can't plan a trip of more than half an hour's duration without making sure we have a supply of sick bags handy. For four months we battered our heads against doctors, specialists, emergency rooms, constant referrals to hospitals that took one look at him and sent him home with a shrug and a command to keep him hydrated until a specialist could look at him....

Last Wednesday night, Luscious and I snapped. We packed two overnight bags and, as soon as he woke on Thursday morning, Luscious drove him to Princess Margaret Hospital, the children's hospital in Perth, where she plonked herself down in the waiting room and refused to move while the staff watched his sick bag fill up. When it was so full it burst, what do you know? They admitted him.

This is what it takes to get action from the health system in my State. The butt-covering only stops when they can't ignore the vomit dripping onto their carpet.

24 hours later, we had a diagnosis.

He's suffering from Rumination Syndrome, a condition with no known cure but an 85% of positive response to treatment. In short, his body has tricked itself into regurgitating food for further digestion, and all we can do is attempt to train the associated swallowing and breathing muscles back to 'normal' behaviours in the hope that muscular reflex will limit the occurrence of the regurgitation. It could take months, possibly years, and there's a good chance he'll never be free of it completely. We've an idea about some of the potential triggers, and we're combating them as much as we can, but that's little consolation when we have to change his sheets twice a night because he's thrown up on them, and his home-schooling takes place between vomiting attacks and medication for the constant burning in his throat and gut.

This is a kid who was almost not born at all-- he almost miscarried on several occasions-- and then was born so cross-eyed he needed corrective surgery to stop him going blind before he was five. He's had more surgery at eight than I have at almost 43, spent more time in hospital than I ever have, whose calmness in the face of needles, MRIs, and invasive procedures is so pronounced that nurses comment on in it in genuine wonder, and the reason is simply that he's so damn used to it that it's as normal to him as picking up a book.

Just for once, couldn't he get a good old-fashioned manflu?

IT COULD BE YOU: CONFESSIONS OF A POD PERSON by CHUCK MCKENZIE

Story number three in my anthology of the mind, and it comes from one of my long-time writer buds, the inimitable Mr Chuck McKenzie.

Confessions of a Pod Person

by Chuck McKenzie

2002 was an odd year. I was struggling and failing to come to terms with the death of my wife, I was struggling and failing to raise an infant daughter on my own, I was struggling and failing to return to work in a meaningful way after months of bereavement leave. And while all that was happening I experienced my first interstate convention and was flown to LA for a week to take part in the Writers of the Future workshops I'd won as part of my prize for the 2001 competition. 'Highs and lows' is not an adequate description.

The interstate convention was ConVergence, in Melbourne. I met, for the first time, a whole bushel of people who would remain important to me over the course of the next 11 years-- drunken escapades with Claire McKenna; book signing chatter with Kate Eltham and Rob Hoge; post-panel coffee with Dave Luckett. And then there was Chuck: the Monkey God hisself; the King Louie of Australian SF. And, once I'd sorted through the 18 kilograms of books I sent back from the con, author of the story that had me lying on my bed, wrapped around the anthology of allegedly comic SF stories in which it appeared, crying my eyes out.

The book Confessions of a Pod Person first appeared in was called AustrAlien Absurdities, and make no mistake, it is a funny story. Chuck's a superb joketeller, able to shift gears from absurdity to satire and back again without breaking stride or catching breath. And this ability is in full swing in this tale of classic 50s B-movie monsters suffering through a perfect "Next morning, Cinderella woke up..." scenario. But there's a double level to this story: it's unbearably sad underneath the surface glamour, a tale of loss and the slow, inevitable strangulation of identity that resonates as deeply with me today as it did back then. It's a stunning achievement: richly layered, subtly nuanced, and ever, ever so good.

This was my introduction to the science fiction written by my peers. It has rarely been bettered.

Read Confessions of a Pod Person.

RIP FRED POHL

Saddened yesterday to hear of the passing of Fred Pohl, one of the true greats of the science fiction genre, and one of the most easily readable authors I've ever encountered.

Like almost everyone else, I have a Pohl anecdote: one that, to me, highlights the grace of the man. I met him in 2002 at the Writers of the Future workshops then being held in Los Angeles. As part of the awards ceremony, the winners had dinner with some of the judges, and my table was picked to host Mr Pohl and his wife Elizabeth. Even then, in his eighties, he was frail and very hard of hearing, but in a week where I was surrounded by authors-- both established and aspiring-- making as much noise as possible in order to prove themselves larger than life (a behaviour in which I was an active participant), what struck me most about him was his calm and sense of quiet. Part of that was undoubtedly down to his hearing, but it also struck me that here was a man who didn't need to make noise to attract admiration. This was Fred Pohl. If you didn't know who he was and what he'd done, it was you who had the lack.

Sometime during the dinner, Pohl was 'taken on' by one of my fellow winners, over a subject I don't remember. As my colleague pontificated with many a pointed finger and wave of his fork I watched Pohl: he sat calmly, listening intently, as my colleague outlined all the ways Pohl was wrong in the way he approached his writing. At the end, he nodded, and thanked my colleague-- some 50-plus years younger and about a million achievements to the shy-- and said he appreciated the outlook of someone at the heart of the new way of doing things. he could have crushed his young protagonist. He knew it. I knew it. I'm pretty sure everyone at the table apart from my colleague knew it. This was a guy who'd published his first work in the 30s; had done everything, knew everyone, won it all and was still going, still working at the highest level possible. There was no 'wrong' in the way this man worked. He could have squashed my colleague like a bug, in about three words flat. Instead, he'd shown humility, companionship, and respect towards an equal.

The conversation moved on, both participants turned to contribute in other threads, and I was left more impressed by that one response than by anything else I experienced on the night.

Class, dignity, and assurance. I've rarely reached that height of behaviour myself, but I damn well know I've seen it.

There was only one Fred Pohl. We have lost a giant.

Review: My Idea of Fun

My Idea of Fun by Will Self

My rating: 1 of 5 stars



Smug, self-satisfied, pretentious twaddle from a cutting-edge writer fearlessly treading unspoiled ground covered twenty years previously by the likes of Robert Bloch and Joyce Carol Oates. Between the high-handed purple prose; long winding passages saying nothing really but jammed in for the sole purpose of demonstrating the breadth of Self's vocabulary; and a plot so minor it might have filled a Richard Matheson short story on a bad day, this is a Jericho's trumpet of nothingness. Tedious and frustrating in equal measure, even the gleeful shock value of Self's "Oh, I'm so naughty" moments come across as little more than a small boy jumping in puddles to upset his parents. Tiresome. DNF.



View all my reviews

AND NEW WORK BEGINS...

One of the major issues with our son's illness is the length of time it takes him to settle down and go to sleep in the evening. We've become accustomed to changing the sheets because of a vomiting attack, of numerous visits to the kitchen for a drink of water to relieve his burning throat, of interrupting our work to comfort him and help him settle long after we've tucked him in for that first, futile time. It's all part of trying to manage his illness, and trying to give him some small quality of life while we wait for the medical fraternity to get of its collective arse and do something.

This weekend, as a way of slowing down his rocket-powered personality and smoothing the transition between it'sdaytimelet'splayeverything'ssobrightandfunanddaytimeandplayandyaaaaaaay! and sleep, we gathered the kids onto the bed, and the four of us began to tell each other a story. I started off, passed on to Miss, 11, then Master 8, and finished with Luscious. We'll do it again tonight, and tomorrow, and so on, until we get bored and one of us ties it off, then we'll probably start another one. Bedtime has become fraught lately: it's a nice way to settle us all down, and the kids love our authorial careers so much it gives them a real tickle to be a part of it.

Only thing is, I liked what I came up with so much, I've decided to make it my next project. With Luscious' and the kids blessing, and with Magwitch and Bugrat now with the agent, Amelia Jonathan Frankenberg will be the kids book I work on while I'm editing my next adult book, Father Muerte & The Divine.

Here's last night's opening:

In a perfectly normal neighbourhood, in a perfectly normal house, lived a perfectly normal couple, and two perfectly normal children.

And the third, whose name was Amelia Jonathon.

Amelia Jonathon was almost perfectly normal. Perfectly normal in that she loved to run and jump and throw balls and read comic books and fart and eat custard like any other normal child. And perfectly normal in that he hated broccoli and needles and dentists and grounding and cleaning up and baths like any other normal child. And almost, because Amelia Jonathon was a girl all the way down the left half of her body and a boy all the way down the right half of his body.

On the morning in question, Amelia Jonathon got out of bed like she always did and washed her face and brushed his teeth, and dressed in her best skirt and his favourite hoodie and went into the kitchen to make breakfast. Today, she decided to have her favourite, which was cornflakes and also toast, which was his favourite. So she warmed a slice of bread in the toaster and spread it with Vegemite, then poured cornflakes on top and covered it with milk. And when she was finished he went to the fridge and poured a glass of his favourite milk and her favourite pineapple juice and finished it off in two long swallows, then faced the day with a smile and a burp and decided to hunt for treasure.

SAYS ME

CRIMEY WIMEY CRITIQUING BABY!

I have no idea what that heading is supposed to mean...

HOWEVER, here's an exciting opportunity for aspiring authors in Western Australia who are looking to join a community of fellow professionals for the purposes of support, networking, and develop critiquing skills.

As part of the thoroughly awesome Crime Scene writing convention taking place in October, I will be joining the truly legendary Juliet Marillier and Twelfth Planet Press head honchette Alisa Krasnostein to present an open critiquing session: thass right, if you'd like your work critiqued by two of the most respected and talented writing industry professionals in the State and me, you can present your work to us and have it subjected to our professional eye!

How do you take advantage of this amazing opportunity I don't hear you cry because I'm sitting at a computer at my place and you're all miles away?

Head over to the Twelfth Planet Press website and read this bit here, then follow the instructions: Email Crime Scene coordinator Linda by 13 September with a brief description of your writing experience and a brief description of the piece you'll be submitting. If you're selected, you'll need to send in your work by 20 September, at which point Juliet, Alisa and I will rip it apart with joyful abandon as we destroy your most precious baby and laugh and laugh and laugh and laugh critique it and present our observations at the Crime Scene panel. We'll be taking both novel excerpts and short stories, so there's really nothing stopping you, is there?

The chance to listen to, learn from, and argue with, three established pros who have read and enjoyed your work. What's not to love?

Get yourself over to the Crime Scene website and check out the brilliant lineup of guests, panels, and general crime goodness on offer, then get your typing fingers over that precious WIP: we're waiting. 

MELDY MELDY MELDY MELD

In even funnier news, the good folks over at SF Signal have invited me to another in their excellent Mind Meld series. This time the subject is world-building: what are my tricks, what do I hate to see, and whose worlds do I most admire?

You can read my answer here, as I sit around the SF round table with the likes of Marianne de Pierres, Ramez Naam and Judith Tarr.

THUMBNAIL THURSDAY HATES THE ELDERLY

I hate the idea of growing old. I'm not vain about it. It's not the greying hair or the deepening of wrinkles that bother me. It's the weakness. The infirmity. The slowness. The failing of body and spirit. I see it in myself now and I hate it with a passion. I have achieved nothing of note in my supposedly best years. what chanc of achievement when my mind and body are fragile, wasted shells?

All those stories where immortal people angst on about what they've lost and how terrible their extended lives are? Wah, wah, shut the fuck up.

Which is my introduction to this cartoon about a stair lift. Enjoy.

"What's say we open this baby up and see what she can really do?"

Review: Making Ends Meet: For Better or For Worse 3rd Treasury

Making Ends Meet: For Better or For Worse 3rd Treasury by Lynn Johnston

My rating: 1 of 5 stars



Dreadfully dull, unfunny, and downright boring narratives about domestic minutiae most of us wouldn't bother retelling because they simply aren't interesting enough to bother with. This is the sort of pallid, twee comic strip storytelling that reminds us why the world needs the Bill Wattersons and Dik Brownes, to show us the surreality and wonder of our domestic plights not to simply recreate it with no insight or inspiration whatsoever. There's no comic effect, no sagacity, no absurdity... every strip is just there, like a boring dinner party anecdote where nobody is quite sure if it's finished or whether they should laugh yet. About the only readers I can imagine finding this funny are church mice and the sort of people who need a relaxing break after the hectic pace of 'Antiques Roadshow'. Cartooning for Nannas by Nannas. Utterly insipid.



View all my reviews

IT COULD BE YOU; THE LAGAN FISHERS by TERRY DOWLING

Time for the second entry in It Could By You, the anthology of my mind.

The Lagan Fishers

by Terry Dowling

How much of an influence has Terry Dowling been on me over the last 12 years of my career? Here's a hint: he's the reason I decided to limit this anthology of the mind to one entry per author-- otherwise, we'd be reading the table of contents for It Could be You Too: The Best of Terry Dowling. When it comes to Australian short story writers, he's the master, with a string of brilliant tales stretching back decades, through a series of collections that mark the absolute high point of Australian SF: Rynosseros; Wormwood; An Intimate Knowledge of the Night; Blackwater Days... the titles are an honour roll, and if you haven't read them, you've let yourself down, and more importantly, you've let me down.

Dowling's stock in trade is the ordinary man overcome, and in many cases outdone, by the imposition of the unknowably weird upon his daily life. His narratives are littered with recognisable communities adapting to a new world, with the glitteringly alien overlaying the familiar landscapes. For me, every Dowling story is a treat to be savoured. The Lagan Fishers is a favourite-- one of the first Dowling stories I came across and one of the most quintessentially Dowlinesque.

Thanks to the wonder of the internet, you can read it here.

ME? THE THIRTEENTH DUKE OF WYBOURNE?

For no reason I can adequately explain, people trusted me with their children this past month.

Twice.

First, I made my annual pilgrimage to my old alma mater at Curtin University, where I gave my annual lecture on web publishing to my annual audience of bemused second and third year students. It's always an absolute joy to head back to the old lady-- some of my happiest years were spent at that University, and wandering along the paths past familiar landmarks, ambling down familiar hallways, and joking and laughing with future-bright students just gives my spirit a steroid pump. One day, I want to tutor there properly. I want to fuck up a whole new generation just like me :)

Then, for the first time ever, I was invited to speak as part of the Children's Book Council Book Week. Thanks to the most excellent Anthony Panegyres, I trundled along to this building:

A large building full of Catholic school girls. Waiting to listen to the author of 'The Corpse-Rat King'. Because the Joker was babysitting their sisters...

Santa Maria Catholic College: a magnificent edifice in Attadale, looking out over the Swan River, where some of the nicest teachers I've ever met herded more than a hundred girls in to listen to me bang on about my writing habits, how I get my ideas, why collecting photos is a writer's dream hobby, and how nothing they learn from algebra teachers will ever help them. I read from two of my stories, forced the girls to complete writing exercises, and generally had the time of my life performing like a monkey in front of three groups of the friendliest, most respectful and downright invested kids I've ever worked with.

Frankly, I could do that sort of thing for a living if they'd let me.

There are rewards to being an author that I never expected when I first started out. I've flown internationally and to four other states of Australia; taught at Clarion South; mentored on behalf of the Australian Horror Writers Association; attended conventions; made friends; read to students in the library of my old High School; and participated in arts projects well beyond the realm of pure 'writing'. It's days like the ones above where I feel connected to a much larger artistic community than just the small circle of writers who make up the Western Australian SF community, and passing that connection on to a circle of new faces is a delight every single time. Some days the bear gets you, but some days the bear is called Pooh and you get to lie in a meadow eating honey sandwiches.

Oh, and, you know: catholic school girls. Gives me an excuse to embed this. Have a laugh on me:

MY CHILD IS A FREAK BUT THEY WILL REMEMBER HIS NAME

Dad, come into my bedroom.

I have a fifty percent chance of this being a good thing.

What is it, kiddo?

It's an early surprise Father's Day death robot!

An early surprise Father's Day death robot. This would imply a 'when you expect it' surprise Father's Day death robot.....

That's cool, dude.

Look inside!

It's being driven by a Dalek!

Because there are days when being a Dalek isn't just isn't death-robotty enough...

That's brilliant, son.

Love you, Dad!

Love you too, son.

You have no idea how much I love you, son.

Review: Hell House

Hell House by Richard Matheson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



Stunningly atmospheric and genuinely unsettling take on the haunted house trope. Matheson's strength lies in creating deep imagery with a minimum of verbiage, and he's on best form here: his descriptions of Belasco House, the 'Hell House' of the title, are sparse and well-placed, giving us just enough detail to make each setting within the house an unnerving combination of gothic ruination and disarming domesticity; and likewise, the four protagonists and their demonic antagonists are the subject of sparing, perfectly-weighted details that leave plenty of room for the reader to fill in the gaps. And it's this complicity which gives the book its power: by the time things turn, inevitably and brutally, for the worse, the characters belong as much to the reader as to the author.

As a writer, it's impossible not to admire the perfect weighting Matheson gives to his narrative-- the timing, the pace, the characterisation and sheer damn creepiness of the novel are masterful. As a reader, the book is both compelling and compulsive-- like the very best thrillers, I was left simultaneously wanting to throw the book down so as not witness the fates of its characters and unable to let go of the pages in the slightest.

A slightly slow opening and somewhat perfunctory climax can be put down to the era in which the book is written, and a certain pompous sexism (and accompanying tendency to launch into explanatory monologues)on the part of the male characters, likewise, can be ascribed to both the period and the necessary setting up of their respective narrative conclusions. But this is a wonderfully unsettling book by a master author at the height of his powers, and is a thoroughly rewarding reading experience.



View all my reviews

Review: The Invisibles

The Invisibles by Grant Morrison

My rating: 2 of 5 stars



Month by month this may have seemed like a revolution in comic book storytelling, but collected into one volume it quickly becomes apparent just how slapdash the whole thing is: storylines are picked up from nowhere and abandoned partway through, characters are followed through adventures that bear no relation to the overarching plot simply because Morrison finds them shinier than the central narrative for a while, and the whole thing rapidly begin to resemble an unscripted, unholy mess.

I have friends who love this series beyond anything they've ever read, and it's certainly facile enough to give the appearance of depth. But there's no centre to it, nothing beyond surface sheen and whatever pop-psychology moment Morrison is grooving to at the moment he writes the next panel. It's Le Carre for the attention-deprived.



View all my reviews

IT COULD BE YOU: AN ANTHOLOGY OF MY MIND

Thursday night, Luscious and I had dinner with the wonderful Glenda Larke, who has recently moved back to Western Australia after umpty million years overseas, and the equally lovely Donna Maree Hanson, who was over for this year's Romance Writers of Australia symposium and who we haven't seen in something like 7 years, which is verging on ridiculous.

Amidst a night of laughs, Glenda's excellent cooking, delightful conversation and more laughs, we spent a short period discussing some of our favourite Australian authors, and some of our favourite Australian short stories, and how one did not necessarily match seamlessly with the other. 

So, for kicks, I've decided to create an anthology of the mind: It Could Be You: Battersby's Favourite Australian SF Stories. A bunch of my favourite Australian SF stories, by some of my favourite authors, and some of my favourite Australian SF stories written by people I would cross the street to avoid but who are bloody magicians on paper.

I'll leave you to decide which is which :)

First up, the titular entry.

It Could be You

by Frank Roberts. 

I've talked about this story before. First published in the early 60s in (from memory, I can't find an accurate reference) F&SF, it's a scathing and brutal rebuttal of the television culture that finds more reality and worth in game shows than in the interpersonal relationships that form the backdrop to relentless televisual intrusion into our privacy, both mental and physical. Everyman hero Earl Kramer is relentlessly hunted throughout his day by television cameras, as the eponymous and all-pervasive game show 'It Could Be You' slowly and inevitably closes in on him as he goes about his daily life. The ending is stunning: a moment of cynicism and heartbreaking realism that hits me between the eyes every single time I read it.

I found this story in an anthology given to me by my parents for my 9th birthday, and it was a life-changing moment. I didn't know about being an author, didn't understand the way the literary world worked and moreover, had no real idea of the role of narrative in everyday culture. But the person who finished the story was not the person who started reading it: I didn't know how, or really make any conscious decision to set out to become an author, but I did know that I wanted to do to others whatever it was the author of that story had done to me. 

I know almost nothing about Frank Roberts, other than he wrote for 'The Bulletin'. But he lies at the very heart of my karass. What's more, the story is as brilliant and relevant today as it was in 1962, and 1979. 

You can read it here.

WANT AN ADVENTURE? WANT TO CHOOSE WHICH ONE YOU GET?

Sometimes a project comes along and it's just so damn fun, wacky, or unlike anything I've seen before that I've no option but to throw myself into the ring shouting "Me! Me!" in a high-pitched voice like a dancing tranny.

To whit: I've been invited to partake in writing the live-action, multi-city, map-based, mobile phone-accessible Choose Your Adventure anthology. Confused? Good. That's the way I like you.

The project is the brainchild of Emily Craven, who's already done a similar project in Queensland. This time she's come over all ambitious and recruited a raft of authors from across Australia, including some of the more far-flung corners of the continent, like... well, Canada. Apart from myself (I'm covering Perth, of course), confirmed authors include Kim Wilkins, Sophie Masson, Isobelle Carmody, Sean Williams, Jason Fischer, David Coe, Marianne De Pierres, and Michael Pryor.

Sexy, eh?

How does it work? Simple. You receive a map with a series of QR codes printed on it. Click on the code, and you'll be taken to a website with part of the story. From there, you choose which direction you want the story to take. Each section is keyed to a real location, so you can physically travel the route as you read the story.

There's a bunch more to it than that, and you can read all about it on the website. But there's a catch. Of course there is. There always is.

The project is subject to a Pozible campaign, with a goal of raising the $26 000 necessary to fund the project by October 4. Visit the site here, read about the project and its aims, learn more about the authors involved, and scope out the raft of cool contributor rewards you'll receive if you choose to kick in a few bucks to help the campaign reach its target. Kick in enough and I take a camera full of exclusive location shots for you to add to your story, making it truly one of a kind. Splash out more than enough and I'll take you on a guided tour of the Perth sites myself. Pledge some crazy money and they'll fly me to your city to write a whole adventure just for you!

Fund the entire project yourself, and I will personally kidnap Sean Williams and force him to have sex with your neighbour's puppy while you film it. It's not on the website, but I will do it.* 

And because everybody loves a video, here's one of Emily explaining more about the project as she tools around the Brisbane area, just like you'll get to do if the project comes to life.

What more could you want? Authors begging? We can do authors begging. Here are some of the emerging authors who'll be involved. That's right: not only will you help battle-scarred veterans afford their next bottle of medicinal Drano, you'll help fresh-faced young bucks discover the joys of early-onset alcoholism and frog-fondling.

So there it is, my darlings. A project that promises to be unbridled fun, for authors, financial supporters and readers alike. Hope you can join me.

(*Just so we're clear, Sean won't actually do this. He's strictly a kitten man, is Sean...)

RELEASE THE BUGRATS!

After much prevarication, faffing about, and spending too much time locked into the day job, I'm please to report that Magwitch and Bugrat is finally finished.

I've sent it off to Agent Rich tonight, and now all I can do is sit back and see whether he decides to take it on.

Oh, and turn my attention to the line-edits for Father Muerte & the Divine. Yeah, that too.

DOCTOR WHO-OOOOO, THE TARDIS

Apparently, the BBC will be announcing the new Doctor this Sunday. To be honest, I'm not that fussed: the British churn out so many excellent actors that you could throw a ping pong ball into any green room in the country and hit half a dozen candidates who would do an excellent job of playing a character whose main job qualifications these days appear to be "must be able to wear silly jacket, run while shouting, and express sorrow for stuff"; and secondly, Doctor Who's been little better than average for the last few years and just simply isn't as exciting, innovative, and satisfying as it used to be.

Also: get off my lawn you bloody kids!

So, while talk of Peter Capaldi and Russel Tovey and that bloke from Dirk Gently and will it be a woman and please god anybody but Dawn French yadda yadda is all well and good, I'm going to admit something-- there's a part of me that really hopes they announce that they've decided to go back and do Colin Baker properly.

That would be worth a laugh.

THUMBNAIL THURSDAY GETS ITS DOG ON

"Last chance to pull over and have an unseen quickie for 40 miles."

Admit it. You've all wanted to.