ECLECTIC PROJECTS BLOG
Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

Sometimes the World is Just a Three-Minute Sex Pistol’s Song

Last night I started reading Laura van den Berg’s short story collection, What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us,  which became one of those books that you start reading at a reasonable hour and stop reading in the wee hours of the morning, many hours after you planned on going to sleep. 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. # 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,

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24/05/2011 1 Comment
Journal

Still in Sleep Zombie Mode

Say Zucchini, and Mean It went out to Daily SF subscribers yesterday, which generally means it’ll be up on their website for the rest of the world to see some time tomorrow. There’s some comments over on wall of the Daily SF fanpage in facebookland, which seem to indicate people have enjoyed the story. 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. # 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. # Facebook keeps suggesting that

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18/05/2011 No Comments
Journal

Posts of a Random Sleep-Zombie

Very random attack of insomnia last night, especially since there wasn’t any of the usual triggers that set off my sleeplessness. In the old days I used to welcome such things, since I could just wander off and do other things and sleep in the day afterwards, but I am now a working man with a dayjob that starts in the wee hours, and insomnia has become a thing that I no longer care fore. 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

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17/05/2011 1 Comment
Journal

Un-Moroccan Chicken and Un Lun Dun

It’s Monday morning here, but due to the vagaries of international timezones I suspect there will not be much of Monday left by the time Say Zucchini, and Mean It arrives in my in-box. Such are the drawbacks of living on the other side of the world, I suspect. 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. # 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. # I kept trying to disappear into the bunker over the weekend, but somehow events conspired to

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16/05/2011 No Comments
Journal

Saturday Morning

It’s been a cold morning here. I pulled a spare blanket onto the bed last night and woke up this morning feeling toasty warm and, more importantly, not several hours earlier than my alarm. The latter has happened a few times this week, and I suspect that I’ve found the culprit. I rather enjoy sleeping in a warm bed, but that requires the bed staying warm and temperatures in my flat tend to shift several degrees over the course of a few hours. It’s been a pleasurable kind of Saturday. Last night I ducked out to do some late night laundry, getting home on the cusp of midnight, and this morning I finished reading Dreams Underfood Underfoot before getting up and eating breakfast and drinking too much coffee while skyping friends I don’t really get to talk too often enough. We spoke of books and writing and hopping vampires and eventually got onto the topic of Eurovision, which only one of us was watching, and that was as good a sign as any that we were done.  Somehow, amid all that, it has become Saturday afternoon and I’m studiously ignoring the fact that there are people coming to my flat tonight and I should probably tidy up a bit. Somewhere amid the skype discussion I remembered that I’m meant to be giving people a copy of Black Candy to beta-read in July. It’s probably handy that I spent most of my writing time working on it yesterday, and that I may actually have

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14/05/2011 7 Comments
Journal

So yesterday there was dayjobbery and tutoring and writing, oh my, with a side of doing the page proofs for Say Zucchini, and Mean It so I can mail them back to the folks at Daily SF and fix the various muddle-headed things I’ve done in the story. 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. # 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

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13/05/2011 1 Comment
Journal

Billboards, Peaches, & WIP Excerpts

This morning I once again started the day with music and dancing, although I substituted PJ Harvey for Peaches The Teaches of Peaches album, which is a slightly different mood to start the day with and one that’s much more likely to irritate your neighbors. Yesterday I had a phone call from my father which started along the lines of “yes, well, I can see how PJ Harvey would wake you up in the morning.” Apparently he googles bands when I mention them on my blog, just to get some idea of what I’m listening too. So, for my dad and anyone else following my music taste online, I’m going to recommend *not* googling Peaches while at work. I mean, you can if you want, but I’m taking no responsibility when you find yourself singing Fuck the Pain Away beneath your breath while other people are in earshot. Should you not wish to take my warning, I recommend Youtube. The clip for the song is awesome. # Every time I hear someone banging on about sexism being erradicated and feminism no longer being necessary, my first impulse is to turn and start ranting about billboards. I mean, being white and male and loaded with middle class privilige, I’m hardly the most astute feminist commentator around, and even I walk past billboards going “seriously, dude, WTF?” Yesterday I came across one of the worst offenders I’ve seen in a long time. I was doing deliveries out in the southern suburbs of Brisbane, stuck

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12/05/2011 4 Comments
Journal

Longing, Essays, Wordcounts, and Dancing to PJ Harvey

This morning I got up and, lacking sufficient motivation to get ready for the dayjob, put PJ Harvey’s Rid of Me on the stereo so I could dance around the house to the track 50′ Queenie while still in my pajamas. There are certainly worse ways to start your day, even if it does mean you’re five minutes late for work and the chaos that entails. Here’s hoping your day started just as well (and if it didn’t, I can recommend dancing to PJ Harvey to start your day tomorrow). # I mentioned this on twitter when I first read it, but I’m posting a link here because its just that good. If you have any interest at all in fantasy, writing, fairy tales, or just general awesomeness, please go take a look at Catherine Valente’s Confessions of a Fairytale Addict over on Tor.com. There are many writers of fiction who double as excellent writers of essays, and Valente is easily one of the best I’ve come across in recent years. In a fair and just world someone would probably go and pay her to write a book of essays, which would be smart and cutting and ultimately brilliant, but since we live in a capitalist culture where essays are an undervalued form we take what we can get. # So yesterday there was writing. A thousand words on Flotsam 6, a thousand words on a short story, and some writing of new scenes for Black Candy since I’ve officially given

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11/05/2011 2 Comments
Journal

Rain & Writing & Too Much Pizza, Man

It’s been raining in Brisbane for the last few days, but it appears that the rain has finally given up and sunlight is starting to peek through again. This makes me rather melancholy; I was rather enjoying the rain and the cold snap and watching the bands of grey cloud overhead while taking my afternoon stroll around the block. 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. # 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

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10/05/2011 No Comments
Gaming

I just walked up these stairs and, man, I’m buggered…

Once upon a time I didn’t own a car and I lived in a city with a laughable idea of public transport. Since I was also young and broke and generally wanted to go to places buses didn’t really go, I ended up walking everywhere and got quite good at it. It became a big part of my identity. My name was Peter and I walked places; any trek that required less than an hour or two meant I didn’t really bother with public transport. Naturally, the walking went away after I acquired my first car, even if the mental image of myself as a guy who walked didn’t. And about a year after driving everywhere I walked fifteen minutes to the shops down the street and it utterly wiped me out. I found myself huffing and puffing my way home, two liters of milk tucked under my arm, wondering what the fuck, exactly, had happened. Because I am not terribly smart, this kind of thing happened a couple of dozen times before I made the connection. I no longer walked, and thus I was no longer a walker. Being surprised that walking now took considerable effort was kind of idiotic. I write five thousand words over the weekend. I was utterly exhausted when I finally hit the end of the story on Sunday night. This isn’t the first time this has happened, but it seems it’s this time where I’ve finally made the connection. Two and a half thousand words a day used

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09/05/2011 5 Comments
Journal

I am Peter’s outright fear of his to-do list.

So I was going to post something about computer games the next time I appeared in the wide and untamed lands of Blogistan, but time has been a bit short for putting together the second part of that particular expedition. Navigating the bog of deep thinking requires time to rethink and edit, and time’s been at a premium this week. I keep casting furtive glances at my to-do list and it keeps scolding me for not getting things done. My sole achievements this week have been marking student assignments for the dayjob I actually like, and finally sending off a round of emails for a gaming project that I was meant to send back in January before Brisbane flooded and things got derailed. There is a Flotsam story due this week. Today, in fact. I’m running late, despite my best efforts, and thus I am frustrated. Very frustrated. There have been attacks of itinerant insomnia. And so part two of Emotion and Video Games essay gets pushed back until next week, after the paying gigs are done with. # The worst part about being busy is that people ask me to do things and I end up saying yes because I’m too busy to spend the time figuring out how to say no. I’m currently looking at the list of three or four things that I really don’t want to do, get no meaningful benefit out of doing, and generally suck at. One of the women at my less-than-pleasant day job keeps

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06/05/2011 3 Comments
Gaming

Emotion, Attachment and Video Games

So one of the things that happened at Swancon was this: I found myself double-booked on Friday night and sided with the Gentleman’s Etymological Society event rather than the Emotion, Attachment, and Video Games panel. This wasn’t really intentional – originally they’d been scheduled to go one after the other – but such things happens in cons and decisions must be made. I do, however, have several pages of notes I put together in preparation for the panel I didn’t make it too, and since I’m a waste-not, want-not kind of guy, I figured I’d torture the rest of you with a more formalized write-up of the argument I would have made. Turns out I had rather a lot of material once I started writing things up, so it’s probably going to happen in three or four posts over the next couple of days. Consider yourselves warned. Emotion, Attachment, and Video Games Part One: The Confession of a Computer Game Tragic I live in fear of computer games. I am, at my core, one of those gamers – the kind who lacks the self-control to say ‘now is the time to walk away.’ Once the game is started, I have about half an hour to turn it off and get back to my real life; beyond that, I’ve committed. I want to figure out how to win, or how it ends, or even what the next cut scene might be, and then it’s three days later and I haven’t slept and I’ve burned through the

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27/04/2011 5 Comments

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