Best. Present. Ever.

The hat came about because my sister buggered off to Nepal a few months back, planning on walking to the base camp of Everest, and asked if there was anything I wanted. Usually when my sister goes places I shrug and mumble something non-committal and end up with a motley array of t-shirts when she returns, but Tibet proved to be a special case. “You know what?” I said, “I’d really dig a sherpa hat.”

The fact that she found one with its own woolly Mohawk is really just a bonus, even if she spent the entire trip with people asking her if she actually liked her brother. Now I just need winter to roll around so everyone shall know me by my resplendent blue-green headware of awesomeness. 

Until Winter, I shall content myself with writing and admiring said headware on the noggin of the Spokesbear.

#

I am, officially, relocated to a new domicile and deadline free.

The new place features somewhat tighter quarters than I’m used to, what with cramming pretty much everything I own into the one room. I’m somewhat amazed that *exactly the same bookcase* appears in the background of webcam shots despite the relocation, because apparently it’s that bookcase’s destiny to be set up opposite my computer in every place I live.

It’s also, coincidently enough, a brand new year. I don’t do resolutions and such, but I do have some plans for 2012. Not big plans, admittedly, but there’s a fairly well-sketched plan of things I’d like to write and things I’d like to read and a single credo – no damn deadlines for the first six months – dominating my approach. The first thing I’m working on are a handful of stories – mostly so I can kick the writer-brain into shape again – after which I’m disappearing back into novella land for a while.

#

I caught up with the inimitable Angela Slatter at a friends birthday party recently, and she mentioned that the Lair of the Doctor’s Brain project she’d been working on with her co-brain, L.L. Hannett, was ready to launch. I’ve been eagerly waiting for this series to hit the blogosphere for months now and it doesn’t disappoint - they’ve started big with an interview with China Miéville and a series of illustrations from Kathleen Jennings.

I’m also pretty sure that every aspiring writer in the known universe has linked to this by now, but I’m nothing if I’m not a joiner: Chuck Wendig’s 25 Things Writers Should Stop Doing (Right Fucking Now) is pretty damn spiffy. And, you know, full of smart advice in amid the swearing, as is so often the case with Wendig’s work.

And since I’m feeling a bit grumpy that the Dresden Dolls are touring and I’m not going to their Brisbane concert tomorrow night, I’ll going to link to their cover of War Pigs and say, well, fuck, go listen. It’s pretty damn rare that I actually want to go to concerts these days, what with the crowds and the young people and the drinks you have to take out a mortgage to afford, but dammit, I really wanted to go to this one and that clip is one of the reasons why.

-sigh-

Ah well, I should probably be writing things anyway.

In any case, my story Dying Young from Eclipse 4 has been selected to be part of Gardner Dozois’ Years Best Science Fiction athology due out next year, which means I can go scratch another thing off the big ol’ list of places I’d like to get published but rarely talk about. There’s a full ToC over on SF Signal, and it looks like a very cool book to be included in.

I should also mention that my story, The Girl in the Next Room is Crying Again, is online over at Daily Science Fiction so that those who don’t want to subscribe can go check it out.

And with that I’m going back to the words and the packing. One of the stories that absolutely must be done before I move is finally done, which means I’ve got about thousand words between me and finishing everything I’ve got due by the end of the year.

I first met Angela Slatter about…well, six weeks or so before I met Laura Goodin…but after years of blogging about Write Club I’m assuming I don’t need to provide a great deal of context for Angela. She’s awesome, she writes remarkable things, and among the remarkable things she’s written is the latest editorial for the Weird Fiction Review. And if you were sitting around, wondering what to do with your holidays, you could do a lot worse than checking out said editorial, As the Weird Turns, and using it as a suggest reading list for the next month.

#

There’s ten days until I move house. There’s still several rooms that need to be packed. I also have two deadlines between now and then. I suspect I’m going to keep mentioning this out loud, since it’ll remind me that I should probably go write the things I need to write in order to meet said deadlines.

It’ll also remind me to never again schedule deadlines and the relocation of everything I own in the same month. Especially when that month is December.

There is no cheer or good humour in me today. I’ve spent most of my time sporting this facial expression:

I’m going to be the guest racer at tonight’s Australian Writer’s Marketplace Writing Race, an online gathering where a bunch of writers…well, write.

*Waves hello to any AWM Writing Races that drop past*

I last guested at one of these back in 2009, just after Horn was released, and it proved to be a lot of fun. Kind of like Write Club, only online and with people who aren’t the inimitable Angela Slatter. If you’re a writer at a loose end this evening, why don’t you strap on your writing pants, fire up your keyboard, and come join us on the AWMforums around 8 o’clock.

THE DALEK GAME

I know I’ve said this before, but if you’re not following Kathleen Jenning’s Dalek Game illustration, you really are missing out on one of the most charming series of illustrations on the internet. I recommend Daleks Can Jump Puddles, the flappereque Roxie Dalek, The Dalek in the Rye, and…and…and…look, just go follow the entire series, okay?

Especially the second Neil Gaiman Dalek, which is all kinds of aweseome.

LIMINAL LIVING

Life’s been…chaotic…for the last few weeks. I took on a new role at the dayjob until the end of the year, I gave notice to my landlords, and I’ve been out and about in the world far more often than is normal for me.

Right now, there’s a definite sense of things being in flux, and so I cope with three of my favourite activities: writing, packing, and planning.

The packing is probably the most fun of the three. I’ve been threatening to move out of my flat for about three years now, usually whenever my lease ends and the landlords put up the rent, but a few weeks ago the apartment finally sold and the new owners informed me there was a considerable rent hike coming in December. I took one look at how much they’re asking, factored in the inconvenience of renting from owners planning to do extensive renovations, and told them as politely as I could that I’d be moving out the week before the rent hike took place.

Fortunately I already know where I’m going and I’ve got three and a half months to prepare for it, so there’s very little of the usual anxiety that comes from house-hunting. I’m going into liminal mode from December on – putting stuff into storage, saving money, abandoning any long-term plans  - and I’ll start making long-term plans again in November of 2012 when I finish up my current dayjob contract.

I’m going to mention, first off, that Angela Slatter is in the process of delivering a very special series of Friday Drive-By interviews focusing on the contributors to the forthcoming Stephen Jones anthology A Book of Horrors. The first link takes you straight to the page she’s set up for it on her website, which means you miss out on the very charming otters that appeared on the post announcing the interview series, but it’s definitely worth keeping an on eye on things if you’re a fan of Angela’s work (as I am),  Stephen Jones’ anthologies (er, yes, fan of them too), or just Angela’s drive-by interview series in general (yes, sorry, I’m a fan of those too).

Hold on, I’ve run out of Bauhaus songs. It’s time to move on to Joy Division (If you’ve never seen the Australian film Three Dollars where David “Faramir” Wenham dances like Ian Curtis, you’re missing out).

Okay, so, other things. I wrote a little more of my morning commute story today, figuring out a bit more about the characters involved. Lunch breaks at work seem to be a boon to getting things done on the writing front, since there’s enough time there to get about two or three pages filled in the Moleskin notebook I’m using, which adds up pretty quickly when the page or two I get done on the train is factored in. The weird part, of course, comes with writing things out of order – I’m just kind of putting down scenes and seeing what the characters do and trusting that sooner or later a beginning and an end will show up.

Interestingly, this isn’t a story I could write electronically. Short bursts of time are terrible when I’m trying to type things on a computer, where the pages are infinite and the keys make pleasant clattering sounds as I work, but a fifteen to forty-minute stretch is kind of ideal for hand-writing. I suspect it’s got something to do with the page itself imposing a kind of structure on the writing, but I wouldn’t swear to it.

I’ve discovered, once again, that working above a bookstore is a dangerous proposition. Last week I picked up Brett Easton Ellis’ Lunar Park while strolling through the shop before work; this week I found myself buying a copy of Notes from the Underground (a book I’ve always meant to read, but never gotten around too) and China Miéville’s Kraken. Fortunately, I’m back to reading books faster than I buy them, so I don’t feel too bad about the purchases.

I also discovered that my Klout profile lists me as an expert of pancakes, which suggests I tweet far to much about breakfast, I suppose. Admittedly, I am only a very small expert of pancakes, but that’s more-or-less in keeping with my pancake consumption. Given the option, I’d choose to be an expert in something much cooler: ninjas, perhaps, or obscure seventies punk bands from Brisbane, but considering I know even less about those topics than I do about pancakes, perhaps it’s best the option isn’t mine.

A friend emailed with the question have you ever googled sinister ducks, which I hadn’t prior till then, but immediately gave it go. I’ve already posted the results almost everywhere, but suffice to say that a good search engine and youtube will satisfy your curiosity and it’s well worth it.

And, since it seems to be the thing to do at the moment, I should mention that I’m on the googleplus in a very “well, this thing exists, lets wait for it do something interesting” kind of way. I’ve never really been an early-adopter of social media before and, based on this experience, I’m rather glad of that. Facebook and twitter were both much more fun to learn when there were lots of people already using it. Google+ just feels like I’ve shown up for a party a few hours early, so I’m standing in the corner and looking mawkish while I wait for the rest of my friends to arrive (I am, rather sneakily, hiding behind the pseudonym Peter M Ball, should you be +enabled and looking to add me to a circle).

• And with that, the spokesbear says I’m done, for it’s time to go back to the wordmines.

It’s a pleasant kind of feeling, one that’s been all too scarce over the last eight months, and it’s rather nice to be looking at things I could do instead of panicking about the things I haven’t yet done.

#

So, yes, an update. Where shall we begin.

As I mentioned in my last post, I disappeared down the Rabbit Hole over the weekend just gone. It was a deranged and foolhardy exercise, conceived by my new boss, where a group of writers gathered together for three days and tried to write 30,000 words each. I wrote no-where near that many, nor did I expect to, but I still emerged from the weekend with 16,000 words under my belt and a substantial head-start on the next few installments of Flotsam.  I’ll be off to continue work on the draft once this blog post is done, forging ahead into this brave new world where I do not have to live in fear of deadlines.

I’ve discovered magical things happen when you do not fear your deadlines. That Douglas Adams quote about deadlines making pleasant noises as they whisk past isn’t all its cracked up to be, largely because missing deadlines just makes you stupid and slightly worthless, regardless of how nice the editor is about things. And writing isn’t one of those activities that gets better with misery and late-night cram sessions. Getting things done ahead of a deadline means the story you turn is much more likely to resemble the story you thought you were writing, for example, and you’re actually permitted to email your editor without starting using the phrase look, I’m really sorry about this, but…

There are other things being written too, quietly and in the short cracks of  free time created by the new job. Catching the train to work means I can scribble down a page or two before work, and getting a lunch break is good for another couple of hundred words. I started a new short story today, something that may be a strange kind of love story, and I suspect it may be the first love story I’ve written that actually has a happy ending. My plan is to write the entire thing on my morning commute, in one of the moleskins I was given for Christmas and never really got around to using because they were too nice for scribbled notes, and there shall be trains and people who think they know better than they do and murdered donuts who suffer excruciating deaths.

(Of course, someone at worked asked about the third Miriam Aster novella today, to which the only answer is look, I’m really sorry about this, but…)

Which brings us, I suppose, to the new job.

I’ve been somewhat coy about mentioning this online, largely because the sensation of having a regular day job that I like and enjoy is a remarkably foreign experience. The short version goes something like this: three days a week I work as a project manager for a community arts project run by the Queensland Writer’s Centre, which is this very odd cross between working a meaningful, engaging, rewarding job that I really enjoy and getting to catch up with a bunch of writer-type people I usually only encounter at writers festivals, workshops, and conventions. That I get to work in offices located at the State Library, above a cafe with decent coffee and a non-mallspawn bookstore is icing on the cake.

I’m three weeks into the contract, and I’ll admit to being slightly nervous about going in this morning. I love the job dearly thus far, but i’d just spent three days in the QWC offices belting out words for the rabbit hole. Surely, I thought, this will be the day I resent the fact that I can’t just stay home and write. 

Turns out, no, it wasn’t. Not even a little. And man, I tell you, that realisation was very unsettling.

#

Okay, some random things.

Kathleen Jennings draws strange and curious things with surprising regularity, and if you’re not following her blog then you’re really missing out. The Dalek Game, in particular, has been one of the highlights of my year. Last week Alan Baxter and I used the medium of twitter to produce this startling rendition of Flash Gordon, Dale Arden, and the Fourteen Ducks who can Save the Earth. Go and check it out – odds are, if you’re reading this blog, you’re going to enjoy the experience. Personally, I think the image answers any questions I ever had about why twitter was a worthwhile place to spend time.

Stephen Dedman’s The Art of Arrowcutting is a remarkable novel, one that’s done a remarkable disservice by it’s cover-blurb given the way the urban-fantasy/noir genre has shifted since the book was first released. I suspect it’s not a book I’d recommend to everyone, but also suspect that those I would recommended it to would come to love it with a kind of fierce and unholy joy. It is, however, almost certainly a book for writers to read – it was recommended to me as a book with phenomenal, Wuxia-influenced action sequences in prose form and it utterly delivered on that recommendation. It also makes me wonder why in hell it’s been five years since someone last published a Stephen Dedman novel, because there really should be more of them floating around in the world.

And: Apex Publications, a company I have a great deal of affection for, have recently had interest Diamond Distributors about carry the Apex range of books and short story anthologies in stores across the USA and the UK. Taking advantage of the opportunity means Apex needs to shift their business model away from short print runs, so they’re currently crowd-sourcing the funds they need on peer-backer.

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.”

There was a delayed birthday dinner with the family, whereupon we set out for The Smoke in New Farm and ate our own bodyweight in American-style BBQ, then we set out to see Wil Anderson at the Brisbane Comedy Festival, and then because I was full of food and happy I stayed up to listen to the latest Galactic Suburbia podcast instead of going to sleep.

Somewhere in there the home internet was fixed, so I rejoined the online world, and I wrote some things. About 1 o’clock I went to bed and actually slept for five hours, which is something I rarely do since starting the dayjob and discovered that being employed is actually far more stressful and soul-destroying than being unemployed (who knew?).

So yesterday was a pretty good day, against all expectations, and tonight I make chili in the hopes that it’ll redeem today in much the same way.

#

The Aurealis Awards short-lists came out yesterday, which includes all sorts of awesome news such as: Jason Fischer making the final list of the Best Horror Novel for Gravesend (and really, it’s about time the Fisch made an Aurealis Shortlist); four nominations for the inimitable Angela Slatter (both her collections were shortlisted, as was the story Sister, Sister and her collaboration with LL Hannett, The February Dragon ); Trent Jamieson making the shortlist with Death Most Definite; Dirk Flinthart making the list  YA Short Story; all sorts of love for Twelfth Planet Press up and down the shortlist.

I’m inevitably forgetting to congratulate *someone* in the list above, for which I apologise and offer a blanket congratulations go out to everyone. Full details of the list can be found over at the Aurealis Awards website.

#

I read Ian McEwen’s Solar over the weekend, which quickly became one of those books that I’m ish-ish about. It was my first McEwen book and I found myself intrigued by the idea of the book after it was featured on First Tuesday Book Club last year, and while it’s got some beautiful writing and characterization it left me feeling utterly unsatisfied at the end.

Basically it’s one of those comic tragedies where you follow the life of an utterly appalling human being who’s rarely punished for their follies until the end, only when it comes the tragedy is so utterly weak that I found myself shrugging and thinking “really? That’s it?”

I mean, I would have been more satisfied if he’d gotten away with everything, which isn’t really really the kind of thing tragedy should strive for. Still, it’s an interesting read, and the narrative POV  is so hands-off and telling-oriented that I’m fascinated by the fact that it seems to work.

It just doesn’t inspire me to read more McEwen, which seems a shame.

#

I keep forgetting to mention this and it should probably be something that gets a blog post of its own, but the latest installment of Flotsam is out over at the Edge of Propinquity website.

#

On the list of conversations I never expected to have with my father, the one that starts with do you have any Warhammer 40k novels I could borrow? is pretty damn high on the list. I also never expected the answer to be yes, but you can’t borrow them right now, but you can have the short story anthologies if you like. Yet, somehow, we had that conversation yesterday, and my copies of Tales of the Heresy and Let the Galaxy Burn are bundled together so I can hand them over next time I see him. He can have the novels in April, after I’m done reading them and making notes for the next interview I’m doing for Auscon.

#

I threw out a lot of words yesterday. It started with all 2,311 that I wrote in Tuesday’s write-club and ended with the 8,000 or so words that I’d put together for the great-lovecraftian-ghoul-swashbuckley-wahoo! novel draft since the beginning of the month. Instantly all the Sturm und Drang of the last few days went away, and I could finally figure out how to write things that I didn’t actively dislike while I was writing them. They may not be great, but the out-of-control feeling that’s accompanied the act of writing seems to have abated a little.

#

A happy birthday for the Galactic Suburbia crew, who just had their celebration to mark one year of podcasting. I’ve been listening less regularly these days, primarily because the dayjob eats time that I used to spend drinking coffee and pondering the state of SF, but I still make a point of catching up with GS when the opportunity presents itself. I recommend listening to the current episode with cake nearby, otherwise you may find yourself pausing the podcast to bake.

#

I’ve started a new undertaking – reading the entirety of Federico Lorca’s The Poet in New York aloud, a few poems at a time. I’d forgotten how much I liked Lorca’s poetry – the last time I read him was back in, gods, 1999 or so, back when I was doing my honours thesis in poetics. After I’m done I’ve got his essay, In Search of Duende, to keep me company, but I suspect it’ll be a week or two until I finally get around to it.

These are the kinds of things you do, when you don’t have a television to amuse yourself in the evenings when the writing’s done.

In a less sane and reasonable world, I would have woken up this morning and gone back to writing, fixing the editing mistakes. Unfortunately I live in a world where the landlord is insistent about things like rent, so I got up and went to work at the dayjob instead.

I may have done all of this, up until the going to work part, in my underwear. It’s also entirely possible I did not. I’ll leave you that to ponder those possibilities, at least until the thought skeeves you out and the shuddering begins.

I find myself wishing my life was less sane and reasonable right now. I’m still trying to figure out how to achieve that without, you know, starving, but on the whole I’d be far less cranky and surly and other such dwarves if I were writing right now.

#

There are days where I’m utterly amazed that anyone reads this journal, largely because some of the people who comment on it, by and large, tend to be much better writers that I am. I mean, go back to yesterday’s entry and read Thoraiya Dyer’s comment about autumn, which is far more eloquent than the post she’s responding too (you could also go and buy her book, if you wanted too, and I can’t think of any reason why you wouldn’t).

In totally unrelated news: apparently if you mention Fight Club on twitter, you get an automated reply from a twitter-bot channeling Tyler Durden. I imagine that’s one very busy twitter-bot, and it’s far more entertaining than the twitter bots that usually follow me, offering real estate deals and fitness programs and dire warning about the machinations of the Illuminati.