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Tried cooking chili tonight. Ordinarily not a thing that’s noteworthy, but so far I’ve managed to burn the bottom of the saucepan and forget to put on the rice and leave off half the optional ingredients that I usually put into a bowl of chili in order to transform it into the kind of chili I enjoy eating.

Tried to work at the day-job today. Again, not ordinarily noteworthy, but after spending three hours watching tech support try to figure out why my computer wasn’t actually interested in doing things necessary to my job – on my computer, or any others in the office, for the work server obstinately believed I shouldn’t be there – it was generally acknowledge that I should take an early mark and come back in to make up the time on Friday when things had been corrected.

Personally, I blame the toasters. They know I’m on to them. My ailing toaster huddles in the corner of the kitchen, unwilling to toast things that should be toasted, plotting my downfall. One of these days I shall wake up with the power chord ’round my throat, the prongs waving menacingly in my face, the toaster glaring down at me with that angry, heated, amber glow seeping through the toast slots. “You were warned, lad,” it’ll tell me, “you were fucking warned, eh? Should have kept your big gob shut. What’s with all the spare toasters, indeed. Bollocks to you, eh. Bollocks to fucking you.”

My toaster, apparently, watches far too many British gangster films.

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One of the perks of my new work-place is that there are far to many interesting things on the internet that are either a) sent to me by colleagues, or b) stuff I go looking for as part of my job. A while back I got into the habit of sending links to my home email, lest I end up spending my entire work-day chasing down stuff on the internet and muttering words like Oooo and shiny. One of my favourite things that I’ve stumbled across this week was the mashable feature on creative (and attractive) QR codes, one of the first things I’ve ever seen that’s actually made me interested in QR codes as anything more than an academic exercise.

Being a writer’s center, there’s also the occasional flurry of links pointing people towards writing advice. I generally go back back-and-forth on posting links to online writing advice here, usually because I either disagree with it or figure it’s redundant to a large portion of the folks who read it (I’m a short-story writer, after all, and short story writers are generally read by other short story writers). Despite this, I figured I’d throw up the link to 5 Creative Flaws that Will Expose Your Lack of Storytelling Experience, since there were at least two entries on the list I hadn’t thought about before.

Still, all writing advice is dangerous if you hear it at the wrong time, even the best bits.

Hell, especially the best bits, ’cause you know deep down that they’re right and you live in fear that you’re  doing it wrong and lolcats will eat you in your sleep.

In other news, I totally want one of these tshirts retelling the story of Star Wars with unicorns. 

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It appears that I’ve become one of those people who are best described as “local colour” and more colloquially known as “total loons.”

I’ve mentioned my habit of writing stories on my morning commute, scribbling away in my notebook while stead on the train platform, but today I seem to have taken the next step and introduced the part of my process known as walking around the house speaking the dialogue aloud and occasionally acting out a scene so I can figure out how the movements feel. ‘Cept today I wasn’t doing that in my house, but in the quiet bit of the train where you’re not supposed to make loud noises.

On the plus side, I discovered something important about Black Candy, and I’ve half talked myself into writing the damn thing long-hand rather than trying to type it all into the computer.

On the down side, my fellow commuters looked at me strange, and heard me repeat about six variations on the following phrase: there are two of us in here, Sammy Dunn and Sammy Dunn. He lets me ride shotgun when he’s wearing the meat, close enough to the surface to remember what’s going on. It’s not a Jeklye and Hyde thing, I swear. We work together, we want the same things, but he isn’t me and I’m not him. Sammy does the crying, the moments of angst and depression. I do the hard work, the guns and the stakeouts, but it’s always been that way and I’m not here to complain…

Not quite there yet, but that’s the curse of testing these things out while far away from a computer. There’s no place to sit down and capture things once you’re done.

But yes, I forgot I bought books. It’s been that kind of week.

On Monday I went up to Rockhampton for the day job, meeting with people and seeing places that are part of the project I’m project-officering for the Queensland Writer’s Center. I’ve known a few people who grew up in Rockhampton over the years, most of whom speak of their former home with the lack of affection that comes from being a teenager growing up in a smallish-city/largish-town, but it turned out to be a lovely city that utterly deserves to be overrun by a steampunks. Lots of glorious old buildings and very wide streets and a surprisingly good sushi place in the CBD.

My favourite part of the trip, however, was the ride home. We had some technical difficulties prior to take-off, the kind that see you go the tarmac and sit there for a while before the plan returns to the gate. There were appologise from the pilot and frustrated passengers and messages sent to the ground crew.

Then they turned the plane off and turned it on again, and apparently everything worked just fine.

Technical support is the same everywhere, I guess.

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I’ve been reading China Miéville’s Kraken at the moment, which is a somewhat surprising book. I’m used to Miéville’s books being good – even when I don’t particularly enjoy them, they’re always an engaging reading experience – and I’m used to them being interesting, but this is the first time I’ve read a China Miéville book and thought, wow, this is fun. There’s weird cults and giant squid and a reference to Pauley Perrette within the first fifty pages.

I like it when writers surprise me.

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On Thursday there was write-club at Angela Slatter’s place and I did a bunch of words on Flotsam and a slightly lower number of words on Claw and a handful of words on a short story. I’ve been writing the last five stories in the Flotsam series as a single, novella-length thing rather than five individual stories, mostly as a way of ensuring that I get everything done that I want to get done by the time the final story hits in December.

Chapter 1/Flotsam 8 is more or less drafted, which means there is rewriting and editing and figuring out of a title, but there’s at least eleven days before it’s submitted and that’s more lead time I’ve had for a Flotsam installment all year. I find myself opening up the draft and looking at the file with suspicion, rather the same way you glare at the sunlight when you come out of a movie cinema in the afternoon expecting it to be night and it isn’t.

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Every now and then people send me links to flash games, and I almost immediately wish they wouldn’t because flash games are the kind of evil that keeps me from doing anything for several hours. Angry Birds ate most of the twenty-four hours, Sushi Cat devoured an entire week while I played and replayed, Dice Wars continues to be far more engaging than any game that simple deserves to be.

Occasionally people ask me to join them on MMOs, and I mostly just laugh and explain there’s no way in hell. The closest I ever got was spending two weeks playing Champions Online, ’cause it was free and it was super-heroes and OMG there are some things that shouldn’t be allowed to exist, and after I tore myself away from that experience I vowed not to go back for fear that I would never do anything else again, ever.

This is not an invitation to send me links to flash games. More a plea that people stop.

And really, that was yesterday, and we call it a win. Exercise and books are an unbeatable combination.

‘Course today I’ll be dead on my feet at the dayjobs, forcing myself to stay awake, but these are small problems and entirely worth it.

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My friend Laura Goodin is an American ex-pat living out in the Australian wilderness (well, Woolongong), writing stories and plays and, if I remember this correctly, the occasional opera or symphony  cycle (I can’t remember which, specifically, because it occurs me that  know too many people writing such things, which is one of those odd things to realise about your life).

She also cooks many tasty things, including this Sweet Potato and Peanut Butter soup recipe she’s just posted for public consumption.

I got a copy of the recipe not long after Laura and I met in Clarion South back in 2007, and it’s one of those meals that you occasionally make for people and they say you know, this is rather good, can I have the recipe please? and you have that lovely moment where you can be either magnanimous or cackle like a comic book villain and say no, it’s a secret.

The latter can make you look cruel, but it will also prepare you for the hard decisions and harsh realities of eventual global domination.

But the Peanut Butter soup really is a nice meal, one that’s become a staple of my winter diet and one of my sister’s default shift-work meals, and since I tend towards magnanimousness I give you the link to try for your own self.

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Got one of those pleasant do you mind if we reprint this story? emails today, which also conveniently ticks off one of the entries on the secret list of writing goals I very rarely speak of.

I’m always caught by surprise when people want to reprint things. Especially since it’s rarely the things I  expect people to want to reprint.

And so there was google, and this rather succinct discussion of the phrase where I discovered the tenterhook was a series of hooks on a wooden frame used in  making woolen cloth, specifically in the bit where the  freshly woven  fabric was stretched out to dry after being cleaned in a fulling mill. The tenter was the frame and the hooks went around the outside, and it had the side-effect of straightening the weave.

We’re not much with the tenters these days, but I found myself looking at the description and though, well, yes, life feels exactly like that at the moment. There have been doings and goings-on in regards to dayjobbery and we have hit the bit where I wait, quietly, filling in the hours with distractions so I don’t over-focus and be disappointed if things that may happen do not, in the end, happen.

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Last night there was writing. Bits of Flotsam 6, bits of the other short story about faeries in paddle-steamers that in that state where I’m rewriting and bridging together disparate ideas, and bits of other things as well.

As distractions go, writing is a good one, although I’m starting to get that itchy-despairing-feeling that comes from being in the middle of lots of things without really getting things finished.

Say Zucchini, and Mean It went live over on the Daily SF site, for those who may be interested in reading the story but aren’t particularly interested in subscribing. There’s been a surprising number of people who’ve emailed or tweeted to let me know they zucchini the story, which is one of those things I hadn’t really expected when I sent the story out, but is really very cool.

The last time this sort of thing happened, it largely involved unicorns. Honestly, I could probably handle being the zucchini guy for a bit.

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Apparently there is a new Michael Cunningham novel out. I foresee a trip to the bookstore this afternoon. Quite possibly by train, so I can finish reading the Laura van den Berg collection on the way, given that I’ve managed to devour all but the final story in the space of two evenings.

What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us remains a phenomenal collection of short fiction. The kind I feel the need to foist upon people with enthusiastic burbling and enthusiastic recommendations. It is precise and lovely and understands how to make a collection a unified thing, rather than a series of short stories packed together between a common cover.

It makes, I think, the whole a much more precious  thing than the sum of its parts.

It’s not simply that it’s a good book, more that it’s fiction that’s brushed with that touch of magic that great short stories are capable – brief and delicate and surprising and altogether beautiful. Not quite fantasy stories, but certainly on that strange intersection of literary and almost-fantasy-but-mostly-weird where all sorts of interesting things happen.

It reminds me very much of reading Miranda July’s short story collection for the first time, or the peculiar rewriting of the familiar that comes from your first exposure to Kelly Link.

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I may be a little scarce online this week. I’m trying not to be, of course, but the Third Edition of the Mutants and Masterminds roleplaying game landed in my mailbox over the weekend and that means the next week or so will be a frenzy of updating my old superhero campaign notes and preparing for the resumption of the superhero game I’m playing with some friend on Thursday nights (temporarily on hold due to teaching commitments).

Yes, this is quite possibly the geekiest thing I’ve ever put on my blog, but it’s not like that should come as a surprise to anyone. I am, after all, a huge freakin’ nerd and roleplaying games where I get to create my own superhero universe from scratch are my kryptonite.

If you need me, odds are I’ll be over in the corner of my office, giggling to myself while I try to figure out how many ranks of fighting and agility guys named Shadow Boxer and Archon should have while Justice League: Umlimited is on the television in the background.

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I found todays post on unemployment and the creation of a perpetual youth underclass on Tiger Beatdown kind of fascinating, especially since it touches on the same issues that were brought up by an Alain de Botton talk that I saw on (I think) TED some time last year.

The gist of Botton’s talk went something like this: the idea of living in a meritocracy is actually kind of terrifying, because if you’re being rewarded for your hard work and achievements, what does that mean when you fail? The shadowy side of a merit-driven culture is that those people on the bottom have only got themselves to blame.

I gather the ideas are explored in further depth in his book , which I’m probably going to unearth from my to-read pile now that I’ve been reminded of its existence.

It’s never really been a secret that these kinds of issues were going to become a problem, culturally speaking. Graying populations, massive changes in the marketplace, the class divides growing wider and wider – this things have been occurring for the better part of my lifetime and the solutions proposed have been stop-gap at best.

For all that SF have moved away from its tropes, these kinds of issues suggest it’s still a cyberpunk kind of future we’re facing.

Some people seem to enjoy the title too, which makes me glad since I once contemplated changing the title, and I can now be somewhat pleased with myself that I did not succumb to the temptation.

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Day two of the random insomnia, which Wikipedia tells me is actually Transient Insomnia, which is the kind of thing that amuses me in my current state of sleep deprivation. It makes me think that soon my insomnia will wander off and become someone else’s insomnia, which isn’t really pleasant for them, but at least we’re sharing and neither of us has to put up with it full-time.

Last night’s sleeplessness was accompanied by an upset stomach, which suggests I’m either getting sick or starting to stress about something that my conscious mind hasn’t yet caught onto. Past experience says that the latter is probably more likely.

Tonight is the fortnightly D&D night, if I haven’t lost track of the weeks, which means I shall indulge in stress release by smiting strange and eldritch evils in the name of Denithae, goddess of apples and fields and having a damn good harvest when spring is done.

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Facebook keeps suggesting that I click on ads about Mutant Gum. Honestly, I don’t think anyone has really thought that one through. I keep wondering if it’s gum that’s mutated, gum that induces mutation, or simply gum for those who have mutated.

Either way, I’m not buying, but it makes a nice change of pace from facebook trying to sell me dating services and advice on how to sculpt my body into some unfeasible Herculean physique. Not that I have anything against Herculean physiques, mind, but I rather suspect the advice will involve long stretches of exercise and weight training at some point, and I suspect I could go organize such things without facebooks help if I really desired.

Things I should post about today, and would do so in more detail were I not yawning:

- Jason Fischer’s short story collection, Everything is a Graveyard, scheduled for release by Ticonderoga Publications in October 2013. The collection’s slated to revolve around Jason’s post-apocalyptic and zombie-themed work, which is the kind of news that makes me extremely happy, if only because it’d be damn handy to have all those stories in the one place.

- The May issue of the Edge of Propinquity is up, including Sabbath, the fifth story in the Flotsam series. I suspect I’ll do a “what I’ve learnt from six months of Flotsam” post sometime in July, whereupon I’ll try and nail down exactly why writing a serial short story series on a monthly deadline is the hardest thing I’ve ever done, and this story may well be the poster-child for both why it’s hard and why it’s been worthwhile.

- Un Lun Dun, which has slowly re-insinuated itself into my readerly affections after the hiccup I mentioned yesterday and become, more or less, the kind of book I was hoping it would become when I started reading it a few months ago. Really, you should read it, especially if you’re unlikely to get as caught up in the concept of the binja as I did.

- Getting the dates wrong on my Daily SF story in yesterday’s post, since it’s coming out on the seventeenth rather than the sixteenth. So, yes, sometime tonight there will be a new story in the world, and it will be my last non-Flotsam story in a while.

- Something else, I’m sure, although I can’t really remember it. Oh, wait, I know: starting a new draft of Claw, the third Miriam Aster novella, that throws out a large chunk of what I’d written in the period known as last-year-before-my-life-exploded and substitutes something, well, good instead. I found myself unexpected scribbling notes for this last night, and suddenly the beginnings of an entire scene fell out of my head, and I looked at it for a long time and thought, “okay, sure, we’re going with this.”

Tonight I shall make the most un-Moroccan Moroccan chicken imaginable, given that it will consist primarily of pumpkin soup with chickpeas and bits of chicken in it, spread over a layer of couscous. The couscous, by and large, is probably going to be the best bit. Possibly also the only bit that qualifies as Moroccan.

It will, at least, be healthy un-Moroccan chicken, if the Australian Heart Foundation website is to be believed, and that’s probably a good thing after the week of pizza that occurred when I was last chasing a deadline.

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There’s a rather nice review of both Horn and Bleed over on the Living in SIN blog, which is  not the kind of blog you’d expect it to be from the title and entirely safe for work. I keep meaning to point people towards reviews of my story in Eclipse 4 as well, but every time I think about it I’m writing a bit of the blog during a coffee break at the dayjob, far away from the bookmarks where I group such things together and keep them handy for linkage.

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I kept trying to disappear into the bunker over the weekend, but somehow events conspired to ensure I never really made it there. I kept being distracted by, say, dinner with my sister and our friend VillainousMog who was visiting from London for the first time in two years and made for some excellent company.

On Sunday I was distracted by sleep and goodreads and the search for a good hotdog and the usual Sunday night gaming session, which meant I hit the end of the weekend feeling oddly relaxed and socialised and in possession of about three thousand words to account for two days work.

Which isn’t bad, I’ll grant you that, but isn’t really the stuff of a heroic effort in the word-bunker either. Still, the novel has a shape forming that’s actually novel-like, and the short story I’m working on hit a point where I figured out what it wanted to do, and I suspect that this afternoon I’ll get back hitting 2,500 words in a day, if only because I’ve run out of distractions and large portions of my house are now clean.

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I started reading China Miéville’s Un Lun Dun over the weekened, which was going swimmingly until such time as I hit one of those things that makes me go “oh, really? We’re doing that? Okay, I guess,” and then suddenly be much less interested in the book.

It’s the sort of thing that happens to me and books all the time. I’ll be enjoying myself immensely and then, out of nowhere, there’s be a parenthetical aside in a third-person narration, and I’ll find my enjoyment deflated and listless from there on. Un Lun Dun doesn’t do the parenthetical aside thing, but it introduces a concept and bit of wordplay that’s distracting enough that I can’t get back into the story.

It’s like that moment when you’re at a party, having a good time, then you realise that you’re actually quite drunk and you can’t get your equilibrium back once that realisation happens.

Still, I persevere, slightly less enthused than I was before, but still enjoying myself. And because The City and The City was brilliant and full of words that didn’t alienate me, and so I’ll trust in pretty much anything Miéville does after that.

And because, more often than not,  Miéville manages the opposite thing, where the right word or concept is introduced at exactly the right time, and thus there is a moment of joy to be had.

Usually there’s something painful about the proofing process, mixing, as it does,   a multitude of how-could-I-be-so-stupid typos and syntax errors with the larger, more consuming fear that the story itself isn’t any good because so-much-time-has-passed-since-you-submitted-it-and-you’ve-become-a-better-writer-than-you-were-and-would-do-things-so-very-differently-now.

The latter part didn’t really happen this time around. I’m still fond the story and think it does all the things I wanted it to do, and the bits I’d do differently I probably wouldn’t do that much better, so they don’t bother me quite so much.

I’m not sure whether this bodes ill for the story or not, once it’s out in the world, but I guess we’ll see next week when it’s sent out to Daily SF’s subscribers.

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Last night’s writing? The skeleton for the first half of Chapter Three for Black Candy – I know how the scenes begin and end, I just have to write the middles – and some more work on Waiting for the Steamer on the Docks of V—, which is heading off in its own little direction and getting longer every time I work on it. About 1,500 words of writing all up, which is less than I wanted by more than I expected given I didn’t get home from work until 8-ish.

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This morning I woke up an hour or so before my alarm, and it was cold and dark and I wasn’t all that sleepy anymore, so I stayed up and idled away the time for a bit, just enjoying the warmth of my bed and the slow shift of light on the curtains and the occasional checking of email on my phone.

Eventually the world woke up around me, so I climbed out of bed and went into the routine. I danced around the bedroom to the Sisters of Mercy’s Temple of Love. I showered and I shaved. I ate breakfast and ironed a shirt to wear to the dayjob. And since I was up early, and more awake than I generally am, I finished all those things much earlier than expected, so by seven thirty I was standing around my living room trying to work out what I’d do to fill the next three quarters of an hour before I drove to work.

So I started reading The Girl With No Hands and Other Tales, since it’s one of the things that was handy on my living room shelves  that I haven’t also read in its entirety, largely because I’ve read a large majority of the stories in other locations.

I’d forgotten just how good Angela Slatter actually is. I mean, obviously I’d remembered that she’s a very, very good writer and I’ve recommended her to people constantly, but I’d forgotten that moment where, say, you read Bluebeard for  and go “oh, sodding hell, this is  brilliant” and go give up on writing for a while because there’s no chance you’ll ever manage something that precise and intricate and resonant. I know this because, the first time I read this, just after Angela and I met and before we were actually friends, I wandered off and tried very hard to do what she did in that story and ended up somewhere very different and nowhere near as good.

But that’s one of the ways writing works, I think. You just keep having conversations with writers who are better than you, except you do it through  fiction because telephones are scary and you’re too damn lazy to email people you don’t really know.

And now I go to talk about writing with undergraduates, whereupon I will try to explain writing in a far less esoteric - but potentially more useful – manner.

The best part about the rain has been walking the path alongside our local drainage ditch, where the grass is the kind of green I’d forgotten grass could be and the drainage ditch actually does an impressive job of seeming like a stream.

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So I wrote a few things last night. Mostly the fifth installment of the Flotsam series, which was overdue and then overdue again on the date I said I’d have it sent through after emailing the editor and letting her know it’d be overdue. Afterwards I did a couple of hundred words on some new things. Flotsam 6, for example, and the beginnings of two other stories. Then I ate leftover pizza, again, and swore that I will find some other food to serve as the I-have-a-deadline-and-no-time-to-cook standby.

I am heartily sick of pizza right now. There’s a grocery list in my wallet, full of things which will be used to make tastier, healthier meals. Bowls of chili and spicy tomato soups and plates of Moroccan chicken with couscous, which is one of those meals I make primarily because couscous is an awesome word to say aloud.

Alas, these things must wait until tomorrow, when the payday comes around and the grocery shopping actually happens.

And at least there will be writing, regardless, and I will watch my nascent little stories grow in ambition and word-count. Then I will proof my Daily SF story, which has just arrived in my inbox for proofing-type things.

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Occasionally, when I lament the wasted time that occurs in my dreaded dayjob, people will ask me why I don’t sneak in a little extra writing time. This is a remarkably hard question to answer with any satisfaction, but it largely comes down to this: there is nothing sneaky about my writing process.

When I’m at my most subtle, writing still consists of talking to myself and sighing a lot and staring at the ceiling trying to picture what happens next. This is something of a rarity, reserved for those instances where I write in public, for when writing alone in my house the act of writing is considerably more physical.

I pace from room to room, pondering things. I re-enact scenes, complete with conversations that are spoken aloud. Often I will find myself dancing for plot, which is less euphemistic than it sounds since it largely involves actual dancing, assuming dancing is the correct verb for the peculiar bopping and flailing that happens when I’m alone in my apartment.

I suspect I pull funny faces too, although I’ve never written in front of a mirror to check this. But there is nothing subtle or sneaky about writing fiction, so it’s never something I’ll sneak in at the dreaded dayjob. If I tried, someone would inevitably notice, and I suspect my dreaded dayjob wouldn’t be a dayjob for much longer.

Which would be fine by me if writing paid my rent, but thus far, writing does not.