Category: Madcap Adventures and Distracting Hijinx

Via the often excellent Grant Watson on Facebook: Honestly, this is the most interested I’ve ever been in Kubrick’s work.

Two weekends back, we drove out to a rescue shelter a few hours out of Brisbane and adopted ourselves a cat. She’s going by the name Admiral Coco Marshmallow Flerkin-Wittingstall, and seems determined to win us over with the deployment of weaponised cuteness: The week that followed was a mad dash to make the cat at home in our small flat, either accumulating new things for a feline co-resident or upgrading things we’d underestimated. After nearly fifteen years of being pointed about not owning a cat in my long form author bio, it’s time to update and admit that I’m finally a pet person. # The weekend just gone, I headed off to the State Library to volunteer for GoPlay, Brisbane’s resident Tabletop RPG and Board Game convention: It was my first convention of any kind since the last GenreCon, and my first gamer-specific convention in over a decade. It was nice to catch up with a bunch of people,

Over the weekend, Matt Farrer (AKA the Shira Calpurnia scribe and general literary bad-ass) did a small thing on twitter where he’d write a description of a spaceship named after you. It roughly coincided with one of those rare moments when I scanned my carefully curated twitter lists, so naturally, I signed on. I am rather pleased with my star faring namesake. Its official designation is "Human Lifepoint Pietro 47-R-Delta" but most Capellans refer to the spherical scaffold of O'Neill cylinders as "the Peter Ball". Famours for its libraries, festivals and zero-gee gardens, it is the only source of bio-grown coffee in the sector. — Matthew Farrer (@FullyNocturnal) September 1, 2019 Naturally, about 30 seconds after I nabbed the embed code for this, Twitter started up the outrage engines and I retreated lest madness find me. On the other hand, Matt’s whole list of ships is spectacular, and worth following all the way to the end. Fortunately, the nice thing

Some days you want to punch a shark, but you don’t, because sharks are big and aquatic and in possession of teeth far sharper than yours. Some days you want to punch a shark, but you don’t have the bus fare to get the the aquarium. Some days you want to punch a shark, but if you cannot go to the aquarium, how do you handle the logistics? You have to get to the ocean and meet the shark in its home terrain, figure out how to handle the rigours of breathing or floating while throwing a punch that will mean something? Do you know how to scuba? Do you know how to surf? How do you even know where the sharks are going to be? Some days you want to punch a shark. Usually, it’s a Monday. Some days you want to punch a shark, but you fear what might happen when you give in to that impulse. Some

I got called in to deliver a seminar presentation on short notice. Twenty-six hours from “yes, I’ll do it,” to being in the room talking submissions and the publishing industry and answering questions about how it all works. Building content off the powerpoint provided and trusting in experience and prior seminars to fill in the rest of what I needed. It went well. Better than expected, since the last time I did a library seminar was around three years ago. I love a quick turn-around project, every now and then. The pressure to deliver on a tight deadline, coupled with the knowledge that you’re a last minute replacement, means I’m hyper-aware the the primary virtue of the work is getting it done on time and good enough instead of fretting about being great.  Over the years I’ve done it with freelance game design, short stories to fill anthology gaps, lectures, workshops and seminars. They’re almost never the best work that I’ve

As long-time readers of this blog are largely aware, the inevitable Angela Slatter is my write-club buddy and overall font of good writing advice. She’s also launching the third book of her Verity Fassbinder series, Restoration, at a Brisbane Libraries event coming up on Friday night, 6:30 to 7:30pm, at the Brisbane Square Library. It’s free, but bookings are essential, so you should hie yourself over here to register and make sure theres sufficient cupcakes on hand when we mob the place and get books signed.  Not sure if it’s your thing? Here’s the blurb: Walking between the worlds has always been dangerous – but this time V’s facing the loss of all she holds dear. Verity Fassbinder thought no boss could be worse than her perfectionist ex-boyfriend – until she grudgingly agreed to work for a psychotic fallen angel. And dealing with a career change not entirely of her own choosing is doing nothing to improve V’s already fractious

ONE I usually roll in here the day after GenreCon and post my thoughts about the conference, but this year I’m caught between either saying too little or too much and so I’ve left it until after I chatted to my boss. GenreCon 2017 is my fourth go-around with the conference and it’s easily been the biggest, bringing in 240+ writers over the weekend and selling out the State Library venue. That’s a far cry from the 130 writers who showed up for the first conference in Parramatta back in 2012. I set out to deliver a 2017 conference that would make the best possible argument for keeping GenreCon around when QWC’s management committee and CEO considered their future projects. The result wasn’t a flawlessly run con – no event this size ever will be – but it is definitely the best possible argument I could set forward. 2017 was a year of phenomenal guests, a year where the volunteers of

It’s rare that I leave the house for reasons that are not gaming, uni, or terrible movies, but next month I’ll be making the effort twice to support a couple of spec-fic-type happenings taking place in Brisbane. And since I don’t want to go to these places and hang around, all awkward and knowing no-one, here’s a heads up for people who may share my interest in all things science fiction, horror, and fantasy who might be interested in coming along. LAUNCH: CAT SPARKS’ LOTUS BLUE and THORAIYA DYER’S CROSSROADS OF CANOPY Where: Avid Reader Bookshop; When: Thursday, 13 April, 6:00 PM; Cost: Free (but preregister) Why should you be going? It’s rare that spec fic writers from outside Queensland launch their books locally, and even rarer when the authors of those books are published by overseas presses. Sparks and Dyer are both great writers and they’re coming to town to co-launch their first novels into the world. Register you interest in attending at the

Tomorrow it will be eight weeks since I started on antidepressants. Since then I’ve cycled through three different types, found one that seems to have manageable side-effects, and stuck with it long enough that I’ve actually had to go back and refill a prescription. This is, apparently, a good thing in terms of seeing the effects kick in and…well, yeah. While I’m not conscious of things being different, every now and then I’ll look up and realise things are different. I also spent a lot of time catching up with friends I don’t see often over the weekend, which meant I found myself talking about the depression and the meds a bit more than usual. And I discovered that I’m extraordinarily bad at it, in a lot of respects, because I keep describing things that sound kind of terrible and being all, actually, it was awesome. Case in point: there was two-week period at the beginning of July where I was

I went to a con. My brain is not working. I have a presentation to the board of the Writers Centre tonight. I want to lie here and moan about sleep. I want to get up and write about the con. I want to finish a short story and go start rewriting my novel. I want to read all the books I acquired, which was comparatively little for me at a con, and it will still keep me going for the next year. I want to write follow-up emails for the unfinished conversations. I want to say thank-you to a bunch of excellent moderators who chaired panels I was on, and excellent moderators who chaired panels I went to see and really enjoyed. I want to talk about how important cons are, and how important they aren’t in the scheme of becoming an SF writer. I want to write big, detailed posts about SF and masculinity, and large-scale story structure,