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.

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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.

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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.

- Descended from Darkness volume II is out, collecting another twelve months of short fiction originally published in Apex Magazine (including my story To Dream of Stars: An Astronomer’s Lament). For a limited time you can pick this up with the first Descended from Darkness collection (which included my story Clockwork, Patchwork, and Ravens) for only $25US.

- My story Briar Day is live over at the Moonlight Tuber site, as part of the line-up of the “Moonlight Tuber #2 – Captain Homonculous Dines with ‘That Irascible Mizzen Mast’ – Part Three” issue of the zine that’s available for online reading or as a downloadable PDF. I think this officially marks editor Ben Payne as the man whose acquired more of my short fiction than any other editor.

- The teaser page for Electric Velocipede 21/22 is live, complete with the opening teaser for my story Memories of Chalice in addition to the works of such fine writers as LL Hannett.  The issue is just $12 US and features a small horde of writers I’m excited to be sharing a table of contents with.

- There are also reports that we’re about a week away from one of my short stories making an appearance in Daily Science Fiction, a magazine that delivers short stories to your inbox every workday. This stuff keeps me sane at the day-job, giving me something to read over my mid-morning coffee, and it’s FREE TO SUBSCRIBE. There should be a web-version of the story eventaully, should you prefer to keep your inbox free of fiction, but that usually comes after the email version is out. If you’re on the fence, I recommend taking a look at the February line-up which includes folks such as Cat Rambo and Nina Kiriki Hoffman.

- The February issue of Locus is out with its recommended reading list for 2011, which named a whole host of Australian SF work including TPP’s Sprawl anthology in the best original anthologies section and stories by me, Angela Slatter (twice!), and Cat Sparks in the short-stories list.

- Bleed scored itself an 8 out of 10 stars in a review over on Scary Minds. To quote: Bleed rocks along at a fair pace, Ball doesn’t allow the narrative to lag at any stage, and you will be dragged into the shenanigans unfolding. There’s a mystery to be solved, plenty of plot twists, and the sort of conclusion that no doubt bodes well for another book in the series. Be careful here Ball’s series is habit forming and I’m already looking at getting my grubby mits on Horn sooner rather than later. And let’s keep our minds out of the gutter here okay!

Which, lets face it, is more or less what I was aiming for. The full text is available over on the Scary Minds review site, and I recommend checking out their review of Eeek! (which features work by my comrade in gauntleting, Jason Fischer) as well. Bonus sidenote: The Bleed review does mention some confusion with finding the book over at the Twelfth Planet site, which is mostly because they’re an older link (Twelthplanet.wordpress.com) that connects to an earlier edition of the site. Twelfthplanetpress.com should make your life easier, should you be, you know, inclined to go order yourself a copy.

- Back in December I did an interview with Dan Abnett for the Auscon podcast. Actually, I did two interviews, largely because the first one didn’t record properly and Dan Abnett was nice enough to come back and re-record things. Not really February pimpery, I know, but since it happened during the blog haitus of December it’d largely forgotten to mention it before now.

And since we’re talking Apex, I’m going to take the opportunity to re-post something that the Apex Chief Alien Jason Sizemore put up on their blog recently. It interests me for two reasons: firstly, because Apex has been pretty good to me as a writer. This is the third of my stories they’ve published, and the first two have managed to sneak onto the occasional recommended reading list and awards shortlist, but I was a fan of the magazine long before I was published there. I subscribed, back when they were a semi-pro hardcopy magazine, and I’ve signed up to be a minion now that they’re a pro-level online market.

But the second reason this interests me is simple: the internet is changing the way people read and consume, and all too often it’s easy to forget this. The internet increasingly makes us passive in our consumption – these days I rarely even go looking for specific websites, since the combination of Twitter, Facebook, and my RSS feed pushes more information at me on a daily basis than I can process. And as a reader of short fiction, I’m acutely aware that passive consumption without thinking about the means of production will inevitably lead to less short fiction for me to enjoy. When I first read Jason’s post it immediately make me think about the relationship I have to many of the short fiction venues I enjoy, and hopefully it’ll give you a moment to pause and reflect as well.

And if you choose to drift over to the website and click on the big alien headed “become a minion” on the bottom of the page , well, that’d just be icing on the cake.

Becoming an Apex Magazine Minion
(Originally posted on the Apex Blog by Jason Sizemore)

One of the most common questions I receive has to do with Apex Magazine and where do I find the money to keep it operating. They see that we pay five cents a word. They see that we buy great art each issue. They see that the published products are polished and edited. You’ll find few typos in our stories (and if you do, feel free to call us out on it, I’d prefer fixing it than leaving it for the world to see like some ugly cold sore). They want to know how do I fund Apex Magazine.

The answer is simple. Straight from my pocket.

How much is this exactly?

It doesn’t take a math wizard to get a close estimate of how much money is spent running Apex Magazine. Copy and pasting Nick’s story into Word gives us a value of approximately 2100 words. Doing the same for Theodora’s story and you’ll get around 7200 words. That alone is $465 in author expenses. The poem was $5 and we paid $25 for the VanderMeer reprint. All told, $495 in author expenses.

I’m not going to divulge what we paid the artist, but I can give an honest estimate of $50 per issue for the art.

Each issue costs on average $500-$600 to produce.

Even with my prior post asking our readers to consider becoming a minion, the magazine has earned $122.36 this month through donations, minion memberships, and digital copy sales. And this is an exceptional month. Most months the amount is $40-$60.

I love financing and producing Apex Magazine. But I sure could use an assist. Even if the amount earned was just half the cost to produce it would be a great help.

I don’t ever foresee me ending Apex Magazine. I love working with writers, artists, and editors too much for that to happen. Yet, painful concessions would have to be made eventually. Our word limit would decrease. Pay would drop below the professional rate. No more beautiful art to adorn each issue. Fewer reprints. No poetry.

This isn’t one of those patented Internet ultimatums: ya unappreciative bastards pony up or I close the show. This is me asking for some financial aid to help Apex Magazine remain a top-notch pro publication. I know it can be done because I know our site visit numbers. Since June, 2009, they have doubled. Over a 30 day span, a single story on Apex Magazine receives an average of 2000 unique visitors (and draws about 10 a day as long as it’s available).

Being a minion grants you benefits and rewards. You will receive each issue (in seven different eBook formats) a week before the content is posted online. You get a discount code for the Apex Store. There are a number of other benefits, as well. Check them out here.

If you’ve made it this far, well, thank you for your kind attention. But shouldn’t you be clicking the link above to become a minion? Get to it, already!

Still, among the cool stuff:

- Doing edits and contracts for my short story, L’esprit de L’escalier, which will be coming up at Apex Magazine in the future. Astute readers may put two-and-two together and realise this was the source of much post-acceptance dancing two weeks back.

- Kicked off a whole new round of snoopy dancing, for it appears that I’ve sold a third story for the year. Once again I err on the side of vagueness until details firm up, but suffice to say that this one is rated pretty damn high on the awesomesauce scale.

- Had the yearly rejection count climb to a tantalising 19 rejections, which has spurred me to get back into the wordmines and get some new stories done.

- Picked up the inimitable Ben Francisco from the airport, whereupon there was nattering about writing and the eating of cassoulet and the planning of literary hi-jinx in the lead-up to the con.

In other news I’m still prodding my brain and saying “yo, you ready to acknowledge that there’s a book with our name on it coming out next week” and the brain continues to respond with a surly growl and a denial. I suspect I’m saving my “ZOMG…BOOK!” type squee until there’s a copy in my hands, whereupon nearby dogs will probably register my joy. I also have to figure out what I’m going to read in my reading slot at the con (logically it should be Bleed, but there’s always something a tad iffy about me reading Aster’s interior monologue); I was tempted to go with the aforementioned L’esprit de L’escalier, but then I realised I had no idea how to pronounce the title without mangling the French and thus it was shelved for another time.
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Current Writing Metrics
Consecutive Days Writing (500+ words): 1
New Short Stories Sent Into the Wild: 9/30
Rejections in 2010: 19/100
Black Candy Word Count (Finish Date: 31st August )

Yesterday I wrote 381 words on a story, poked at another to see where it fell over**, cleared out 50-odd e-mails had been waiting for me to answer them since the beginning of January***, ate half a loaf of bread, took out the rubbish, pondered tactics for tonight’s Bloodbowl game****, and learned that one of my stories from last-year has been picked-up-for-a-reprint-that-I’m-not-sure-I-can-talk-about-yet-so-we’ll-leave-that-there.

Among the various e-mails was a note from Andrew C Porter that basically went along the lines of linked you on my blog, and you might want to go check out the nice things Apex Submission’s Editor Maggie Jamison said in her interview. And so I went, and nice things were said, and Andrew’s blog proved to be fun and vaguely maddening with his insistence on posting Advanced Dungeon’s and Dragon’s trivia that I half-remembered but couldn’t *not* try and answer out of some vague and misplaced sense of gamer-geek pride. Andrew’s also got interviews up with John Klima of Electric Velocipede and Rick DeCost of Absent Williow Review, and blogs quite honestly and amusingly about the whole trying-to-get-published thing.

Current Project: Getting Back to Basics
Number of Stories Submitted in February: 0 of 8
Rejections Accrued in 2010: 0
Consecutive Productive Writing Days: 0 <- Say it with me: FAIL
Days without coke and other soft-drinks: 1
Days without chocolate: 1
Today the Spokesbear is: trying not to point out that giving up chocolate is pointless if I fill the gap with half a loaf of white bread and butter, failing at it, then giving me an aggrieved “shouldn’t you be working” sigh.

*keeping the laptop on battery power while playing on the internets means I can’t waste the *entire* day hanging out here.
**The beginning, mostly
***folks should know that I am teh suxxor at e-mail when afflicted with The Fear, because every e-mail starts with the question “how can I avoid looking like an idiot.”
****I play halflings. The scattered few of you familiar with Bloodbowl can laugh at the absurdity of contemplating tactics now.

The weekend itself was freaking awesome and laden with opportunities to catch up with folks I don’t get to see anywhere near enough (the redoubtable Jason Fischerand Best-Fantasy-Short-Story-Co-Winner Christopher Green among them).

2. Finally sat down and indulged my inner Charlie Kaufman fan by watching Synecdoche New York. It felt rather like someone had cut the last twenty minutes off Adaptation and left us with the confused muddle of stuff, but it also replaced Nicholas Cage with Philip Seymour Hoffman which helped keep me watching once I realised the plot-compass was set somewhere between “meander” and “Plot? Who do you think you’re talking to, buddy?” Overall it seems to be one of those big, muddled films you can primarily admire for their ambition and the quality of the parts. I’m sure it would reward me for putting the effort into puzzling out its metaphors and meanings, but at the same time it doesn’t actually inspire me to do so.

3. There’s a partial TOC for Twelfth Planet Press’ suburban fantasy anthology, Sprawl, making its way around the internets. It runs something like this:

Liz Argall – Seed Dreams (comic)
Peter Ball – One Saturday Night, With Angel
Deborah Biancotti – Never Going Home
Simon Brown – Sweep
Stephanie Campisi – How to Select a Durian at Footscray Market
Thoraiya Dyer – Yowie
Dirk Flinthart – Walker
L L Hannett – Weightless
Pete Kempshall – Signature Walk
Ben Peek – White Crocodile Jazz
Tansy Rayner Roberts – Relentless Adaptations
Barbara Robson – Neighbourhood Watch
Angela Slatter – Brisneyland by Night
Cat Sparks – All The Love in the World
Anna Tambour – Gnawer of the Moon Seeks Summit of Paradise
Kaaron Warren – Loss
Sean Williams – Parched (poem)

4. I am so totally over summer.

5. It’s lunchtime. I’m off to scrounge up some food.

1) Tio Gilberto and the Twenty-Seven Ghosts @ Podcastle

The audio version of Ben Fransisco’s story Tio Gilberto and the Twenty-Seven Ghosts is live over at Podcast. Go forth and feast your ears upon it; you will not be sorry.

2) Fantasy Magazine Best Story of 2009 Poll

If you haven’t had the chance yet, hie yourself over to Fantasy Magazine and place a vote in their 2009 reader poll to determine the favourite story published there last year. My votes swung towards Angela Slatter’s The Chrysanthemum Bride and Lisa Hannett’s The Good Window, but as usual you can’t go wrong with the majority of the stories that Fantasy publishes.

3) Apex Magazine’s First Annual Reader Poll

Apex Magazine is also looking for your vote on the best story they published in 2009, although I’m steering clear of recommendations given that two of the stories involved were mine.

To celebrate the end of our first year of becoming a professional level digital magazine, I’m pleased to announce that we will be presenting an award to the best original fiction published by Apex Magazine. The award will be voted on by the fans, meaning you! Voting starts tonight and will continue through January 30th. The story receiving the most votes will be announced on February 1st.

The author of the Apex Magazine Story of the Year will receive a trophy and the unique distinction of being the best Apex had to offer during 2009.

Presented below are the twenty-two original stories published during 2009:
“59 Beads”(4300) by Rochita Loenen-Ruiz
“Overclocking”(2600) by James L. Sutter
“After the Fire”(2900) by Aliette De Bodard
“Benjamin Schneider’s Little Greys”(2100) by Nir Yaniv
“A Poor Man’s Roses”(2400) by Alethea Kontis
“To Dream of Stars: An Astronomer’s Lament” (5500) by Peter M. Ball
“Fungal Gardens”(6100) by Ekaterina Sedia
“Advertising at the End of the World”(4100) by Keffy R.M. Kehrli
“Kenny 149″(2700) by Brad Becraft
“Pimp My Airship”(6000) by Maurice Broaddus
“She Called Me Sweetie” (4500) by Glenn Lewis Gillette
“…That Has Such People in It”(2300) by Jennifer Pelland
“Hideki and the Gnomes” (500) by Mark Lee Pearson
“Clockwork, Patchwork and Ravens” (7500) by Peter M. Ball
“Waiting for Jakie”(3000) by Barbara Krasnoff
“Hindsight, in Neon” (2400) by Jamie Todd Rubin
“The Mind of a Pig”(3000) by Ekaterina Sedia
“The Puma”(6700) by Theodora Goss
“Dark Planet”(4300) by Lavie Tidhar
“Cai and Her Ten Thousand Husbands”(4500) by Gord Sellar
“On the Shadow Side of the Beast”(3900) by Ruth Nestvold
“Starter House” (5000) by Jason Palmer

Place your vote here

I’m going to throw up my usual disclaimer for this kind of thing: I’m not asking you to vote for me, but I’d really recommend you go check out Apex and encourage them continue what they’re doing by voting. And if you feel like you haven’t read enough of the fiction on this years list, well, its right there in a handy list full of links – go check some out.