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.

The last few days have settled into a comfortable kind of routine – I get home from the dayjob, I don’t turn on the internet, I read a book until five o’clock or so, then I eat dinner and force myself to write 1000 words before I go to sleep. My brain’s resisting the latter – last night I wrote the first five hundred words with ease, then scrambled for the last four hundred or so for hours before admitting defeat and collapsing into bed.

Tonight there is teaching, which means I’ll have to forgo the reading, and the 1000 words will be an even bigger challenge. It needs to be done, because at this point 1000 words a day is pretty much the line between me and wholesale insanity, and I’d prefer not to be going into guilt-induced craziness as the year progresses. I am far too fond of drama, after all, and I really need to get over that.

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In my spare time, at the dayjob, I’m trying to figure out how to sculpt a horse out of paperclips. Not a terribly good horse, for I’m not that artistically inclined, but something that’s satisfyingly horse-like. I’m currently struggling with the tail.

So if anyone knows any good sculpting-horses-out-of-paperclip type tips, I’d be happy to learn them.

And now that I typed that, man, I really miss working from home. At least there my time-filling exercises were things like cleaning the bathroom or baking cupcakes.

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I did make chili last night, and it was quite good. Unfortunately, I left out the bacon. Fortunately, this means I’ll be eating bacon and eggs for lunch today, which is one of those side-effects that make me happy.

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I’m listening to the Prodigy a lot this week, which is kinda weird. It’s been years since I last plot-danced to Voodoo People. We’re talkin’ the fricken’ nineties.

I would imbed the video, but apparently that doesn’t work for this site anymore (which means, I suppose, there’s a redesign in the works somewhere in the future). I guess you’ll just have to make do do-do do doo, do do-do do-do sounds yourself, then whisper the words magic-people-voodoo-people yourself to get the right effect. Or you can follow a link.

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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.

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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.

I’m always a bit ish-ish about recommending books to people. Giving books to people is fine – there are few things I enjoy more than randomly giving friends books they might enjoy – but asking people to trust my taste and spend their hard-earned money on something is…ish-ish.

This doesn’t mean I don’t do it.

And after slinging stones in their direction last month about some writer’s guidelines I thought I’d take a moment to recommend a few of  Ticonderoga Publications publications, especially since they’re running a sale that takes  10% off pre-orders and 20% off direct orders of their existing fiction until the February. The former, for instance, would include Bluegrass Symphony by L.L. Hannett in both Hardcover and Softcover, while the latter would include Angela Slatter’s The Girl With No Hands and Other Stories, and ordering work from either of these fine writers would be a worthwhile use of your hard-earned discretionary cash.

I’d also point out that aspiring writers could do worse than ordering a copy of Stephen Dedman’s The Lady of Situations, which is the book I reach for when I contemplate short story collections and how they should be put together. The writer David Jauss once put together an essay, Standing Stones, on the various ways short story collections become a unified whole, a brilliant read in and of itself, and every single thing he identified is at work in The Lady of Situations; the hand-offs from one story and the next are beautifully coherent without being obvious, there are liaisons between the stories in the form of words and image being reworked from different angles, there are contrasts and mirrors and occasionally there are motifs rise to the surface without becoming heavy-handed. Stephen Dedman as a short story writer is brilliant – the story From Whom All Blessings Flow alone is testament to that - but the collection as a whole…

Well, as a whole, it’s something to aspire too. Reading Dedman’s collection with Jauss essay (available in the collection Alone with All That Could Happen) may have been one of the most educational things I ever did as a writer. If you’ve got the cash to purchase both and you’re interested in the short story collection as a form, I highly recommend it.

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As we amble towards my thirty-fourth birthday, I’m slowly discovering things I should no longer do.

Order prawns on a pizza, for example.

Stay up all night working on a story when I need to go to work at 8 AM the next day.

Guess which of these I did last night, and exactly how much I’m paying for it today? It would be nice to say I regret nothing, but mostly I regret the pizza.

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Over on twitter Tansy Rayner Roberts noted that the current explosion of Australian SF podcasts doesn’t actually include a podcast that interviews Australian writers, and the general consensus seems to be that everyone thinks this is a very good idea, but no-one really has the time to do it. Or they have the time, but lack the technical know-how.

It’s a good enough idea that I expect someone will break eventually. Had I an adequate microphone for the task of recording, a fiendish partner in crime, and the free time to edit audio files into listenable form, it probably would have been me.

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I’ve started reading the unabridged Moby Dick, mostly because of Jeff Smith’s Bone comics. It’s not the book I was expecting it to be, but mostly in a good way. Mostly, when I pick up copies of Moby Dick, I read the chapter on the Whiteness of the Whale and read it aloud for the pleasure of reading it aloud and then put it away again.

I blame Bone for my tendency to do all these things, right down to the choice of chapter, for it’s mentioned (in the introduction, I think) of the same collected volume that contains the Great Cow Race, which is really the volume of Bone you want to own if you’re only going to own the one, if only so you can figure out why comic book people laugh at the phrase stupid, stupid rat creatures. And occasionally giggle at quiche.

Moby Dick is a stranger book than you’re expecting, if you’ve never picked it up before. It’s also intimidatingly large, should you find yourself pressed for reading time. I like it, though. It’s the product of a time when the concept of the novel wasn’t quite so formed, and it’s a massive  tangle of words, but it’s intriguing in its bizarreness.

Phase two requires me to finish the rewrites on Cold Cases*. I have twelve days. That’s a chapter’s worth of rewrites per day, about two-and-half to three thousand words. If I succeed, I will allow myself to have a guilt-free weekend of not-writing in May**. I’ve prepared for this task by making a weeks worth of meals in advance, stocking up on coffee, and dancing around the house to Goldfrapp***.

To aid me in this task****, I also baked a cake. Specifically, a chilli-carrot cake. It looks something like this:

Not an elegant looking cake, I’ll grant you that, but tasty. Tasty wins out over elegance in my world, especially since I’m the one who’ll be eating it. It also brings the sum total of cakes I know how to cook up to two (the other being a variant on Sri-Lankan Love Cake served with ginger cream, which I can no longer make because I no longer own a food processor and refuse to crush cashews by hand).

Since I twittered about it’s making and some people asked about it, I give you the recipe for the snack du-jour of this twelve-day rewriting death march.

Chili Carrot Cake

Stage One Ingredients
3/4 cup of vegetable oil
2 cups sugar
4 eggs
2 cups finely grated carrot (or something close to it; I generally use two largish carrots and figure that’ll be close enough)

Stage Two Ingredients
2 cups of flour (probably should be sifted, but I can rarely be arsed)
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon of salt
2 or 3 teaspoons of minced chili (this makes for a mildly spiced carrot cake; I’m tempted to go a little stronger next time)
1 or 2 teaspoons of minced ginger

Method
- Bung all the stage one ingredients in a bowl and beat them like they owe you money.
- Add all the stage two ingredients. Mix until the whole thing looks like cake batter.
- Pour into a cake tin
- Put the cake tin in an oven pre-heated to 180 c for about an hour

I tend to cut bread-sized slices off mine and butter them before serving, but I suppose you could dust it with caster sugar or something if you were so inclined (which is what was recommended for the recipe I adapted this from, but that cake used cinnamon and nutmeg where the chili goes, so your mileage may vary). My only real note to all that is this: if you’re going to hand-grate carrot, remembering that it’s a pain to clean off the grater afterwards.

* Also known as the project that’s causing me the most guilt because it’s not yet done.
**Well, probably not since I never allow myself a guilt-free weekend of not-writing, but I’ll try.
*** Dancing badly, but dancing.
**** Finishing Cold Cases, not dancing to Goldfrapp

I’ve mostly arrived at this situation through habit, laziness, and the tendency towards belt-tightening when one lives alone and doesn’t get to share around the general costs of living. I’m also aware that it’s not a good state of affairs, especially since I’m taking the easy route of take-away food far more often than I used too (which, yes, contradicts the belt-tightening logic above, but the other part of living alone is *keeping yourself sane* so it pays not to examine my logic too deeply). So last week I contacted one of those organic famer-direct delivery services the internet has on offer, and this afternoon a nice chap has delivered the first box of randomly-assorted in-season fruit and veg to my door.

It’s a veritable cornacopia of tastiness. I know, because I’ve already devoured the first of the nectarines. This is not the bit where the future is awesome.

No, the bit where the future is awesome came after about thirty minutes of searching for the doobie-do that connects my digital camera to my computer and failing. “Woe,” said I, “for now there will be no visuals to accompany the blog post.”

“Hey dumbarse,” said the spokesbear, “you dear realise that your new computer came with a SDHC drive that’ll fit the data thingy from your camera, right?”

And lo, he was correct, and the future corrected my problem before I even realised such things were possible. Freaking awesome. *This* is why it’s good to be a luddite sometimes.

Also, I finished rebuilding a story that’s been sitting around in parts for the last three months, waiting for me to revise it and fix it and sent it out in the world. Productivity FTW!

Also, I have peaches. They are delicious. The fruit half of that box is so not lasting the weekend.

And since today is Friday, and I’m certain of this because I’ve double-checked this time, I’ll be heading off to celebrate the launch of the Tangled Bank anthology where a bunch of fine authors (including Chris Green and Ben Francisco) have been rocking Darwinian Evolution, SF-Short-Story Style.

Current Project: Getting Back to Basics
Number of Stories Submitted in February: 0 of 8
Rejections Accrued in 2010: 0
Consecutive Productive Writing Days: 1
Days without chocolate: 9
Today the Spokesbear is: OM-NOM-NOM-NOM.

If you’re trying to track me down at any point during the con, that’s your rough guide for finding me. All offers to help me go find pies and black beer will be gratefully accepted

I’ve been trying to do this – and failing – for most of the day.

Actually before I start, it’s probably worth pointing out that I have this obsession with bad fast-food from places that do their best to try and replicate the fast-food experience of a McDonalds but just don’t quite get it. Show me someone’s random idea to try and revolutionise the franchise fast-food industry or a local take-away doing something odd and I’m there with a couple of bucks in my pocket and a desire to see their worst. It’s a sickness, I know, but it’s mine and I’ve come to grips with it. It’s like those people you know who are obsessed with bad movies and love them for their flaws – I’m obsessed with bad fast-food and love it despite the stomach pains and added kilograms that result. Call it a desire to savour the culinarily camp. 

Which brings us, then, to Snitzl - a fast-food restaurant I discovered while driving home yesterday built around the theme of doing very bad things to the chicken schnitzel. How bad, you ask? Well, alongside such traditional meals as the schnitzel with gravy and cheese or the schnitzel with salsa, they also offer such delicacies as the Thai Schnitzel (Schnitzel with coconut curry sauce, Thai vegetables, cheese and sweet chilli sauce), the Swag Schnitzel (BBW sauce, bacon, fried onions, cheese), and the Chine-eze (mixed vegetables with sweet & sour sauce, plus pineapple and the inevitable cheese). I’ll leave it to your imagination as to which I was eating above (suffice to say, it bore only a vague resemblance to what I was expecting).

There’s more, of course – pick a nationality and they’re adopting their cuisine to schnitzel form, plus the inevitable variants on the meal deal, happy meal, and seniors meal. The best part was, of course, discovering that they home-delivered – you could get schnitzel abominations delivered to *to your door* if you were sufficiently interested. As dodgy fast-food places go, it was a veritable cornucopia of awesomeness; they had the flashy logo on the outside, all polished up and well-lit to suggest their legitimacy; they had the weird and wonderful mix of gimmick foods; and they had the lingo down as you walked in. Someone had put thought into the appearance and marketing of this. Sadly, however, it ended there – once you actually got inside it looked much like your local fish-and-chippery and thus the temptations of their exotic schnitzel variations was something to be met with suspicion rather than joy.

I’d like to say this ended well, but that goes against the spirit of trying such places out. Mostly you go to them to revel in the complete cognitive dissonance of seeing the basics of marketing and the capitalist impulse go awry, and in that respect Snitz doesn’t disappoint. I mean, I can now have a schnitzel covered in satay sauce, carrot, onion, coriander and cheese delivered to my house (dubbed the Indo D’Lite, though I’ll lay even money on the fact that it’s neither) and that’s worth more than little things like taste. In fact, wereit not for the Styrofoam containers used away, I could almost come to like the place. Compared with previous experiences, it’s actually okay. I’ve definitely had worse – South East Queenslanders who were out late on a Saturday night a lot in the 90′s may remember the short-lived 24-hour Brodies chain, which remains the lower echelon of such places I’ve experienced (and in recent years I delighted to discover that one still existed out in Warwick, and I immediately ate there upon discovering its existence).

Tonight, though, is devoted to recovering to yesterdays experience - I’ll steam myself a chicken breast with ginger and a handful of vegetables and eat like a sensible person. And I’ll dream of the upcoming trip to Adelaide in June, upon which I will be convincing Jason to take me in search of a Pea Floater.