ECLECTIC PROJECTS BLOG
Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

Saturday Morning

It’s Saturday morning and I’m drinking instant coffee. Maccona Classic Dark Roast with milk and one sugar, for those who might be interested, although I have no earthly idea why you would be. In an hour or so I’m going to ignore the rest of the internet and start talking to the scattered members of my online crit group, who conveniently double as a group of good and articulate friends, so there’s still good reason to skype on the dates when we’re meant to be critting and no-one actually submitted things. This, I suspect, is as close to being one of the hidden secrets of writing as I can think of – find people you enjoy talking too who happen to be writers, then talk to them as often as you can. Ideas will form, ambitions will solidify, and the day-to-day despair of being underpaid and frustrated by the blank page will gradually fall by the wayside. I remember this far less often than I should. # The Friday issue of Daily Science Fiction containing my story appeared in my inbox overnight, delayed until Saturday morning by the magic of time zones. The online version isn’t up yet, but I’ll post a link when it is (I think the delay is about a week, but I subscribed to get the stories via email, so I’m not entirely sure). # I’ve been up since five AM for reasons unfathomable to me, and spent most of that time re-reading parts of books I

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12/02/2011 1 Comment
Gaming

Gauntlet Free Posting

Tonight there was nerdery instead of writing. The crew came over for our bi-weekly Pathfinder/D&D session (it depends on how willing you are to acknowledge the shift) and we accidentally triggered what I hope was one of the nastier fights on our dungeon level. Relocating the session to my place is a relatively recent development, which is both awesome (since I no longer have to travel) and slightly problematic (since I don’t have  table and that slows us down a little). ‘Course, now I’m wired on coffee, sugar, and elevated levels of geekery-related adrenaline (crits! holy smite! level-up!). I expect Fritz the laptop will be joining me for some pre-sleep wordcount, even if it’s not a huge number. Tonight also saw me sign up for my regular fruit and vegetable delivery, which means sometime over the weekend someone will deliver a small box of tasty, tasty food to my doorstep. All in all, I’m going to call this a good day.

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09/02/2011 1 Comment
Journal

Fists of Steel: Write Club Edition

Tonight there was write club, which is usually good news for the wordcount. I managed to bang out the first six hundred words of the next Flotsam story (faster than expected), but fell a couple of hundred words short of my goal to finally crack 5,000 words on the great-lovecraftian-ghoul-swashbuckley-wahoo! novel draft. I also tinkered with the Black Candy draft for the first time since starting the gauntlet, working out how it’s going to fit into the daily routine. And because I cannot help myself, I even added a hundred or so words to a short story that I’m resolutely not-writing and will continue not-writing until it magically becomes written. I absconded from proceedings slightly early because day-job demands rising early and I now turn into a miserable bastard if I’m not in bed by 11 o’clock. I was already a miserable grump this evening because I got the news that the owners of my flat are planning sell in the near future, and the real estate agents are bringing around potential buyers over the next couple of weeks. This largely means that I need to stay on top of the cleaning (not something I’d planned to do during the gauntlet), start fretting about the finances in case I need to move, and do further fretting about what this may mean if I don’t have to move but the new owners actually plan on listening to the estate agents when they advertise the block as a “renovator’s delight” and actually attempt

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08/02/2011 No Comments
Works in Progress

Fists of Steel: The snooze button edition.

– Gauntlet, an update: distractions, distractions, distractions. One Flotsam story is down, which means there’s three to go ‘fore the Gauntlet is done. I lost much of the afternoon catching up on things that needed doing (deadlines, proofs, contracts)  – The weekend was long and only about 30% pleasant. I’m running short on sleep and planning on turning in early tonight. Hopefully today’s writing-induced adrenaline spike won’t keep me awake. I may take the laptop to bed and try to nail down 300 words of the lovecraftian-ghoul-swashbuckley-wahoo! novel draft. – Tomorrow there is write-club and going through more proofs. February is odly busy on the writing-and-getting-stuff-out front.

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07/02/2011 No Comments
News & Upcoming Events

Blatant Self Promotion: February

Okay, since February is deveoted to the Gauntlet, I’m just going to cram a whole months worth of blatant self promotion into the one post. Strap yourselves in, ’cause it looks like February is a busy one: – 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

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03/02/2011 5 Comments
Works in Progress

FISTS OF STEEL!

The 2011 Feb-March writing gauntlet has begun, whereupon Jason Fischer and I spent two months straight bellowing word-counts and motivational taunting at one another while attempting to attain crazy levels of writing productivity. The Rules of the gauntlet are simple: three projects enter, none of them leave. Right now, Jason is ahead of the curve. My goals for March 31st, incidentally: – Finish four Flotsam stories by March 31st, so I’ve finally built up a buffer on the monthly deadlines (this includes the Feb story, due in three days) – Finish the first quarter of the great-lovecraftian-ghoul-swashbuckly-wahoo novel (approx 30,000 words) – Finally rewrite the first quarter of Black Candy to make it legible and fix the pacing issues. I’ve mostly been focused on point 1, for lo, it has a deadline (and I’ve been sick). Today is the first day of February where I’m actually rested, so I expect there will feverish keyboard pounding taking place until the wee hours this evening. I will probably shout Fists of Steel at least once per hour. I may even youtube Eye of the Tiger.

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03/02/2011 1 Comment
Journal

CMS

Every couple of years I seem to end up in a job where someone wants me to write web-content for their small business. I’m not particularly sure why I end up with these jobs – I’ve never been particularly good at SEO and the accompanying headaches that come with writing for the web for money – but somehow it keeps happening despite my best intentions and heartfelt promise that it will never happen again. When I went into the interview for my current job they mentioned they might want me to do a little work on their website, and I brought up the question of which content management system they were using. This brought a blank look from the interviewer, but after a little explanation we eventually got the answer: “we don’t know; we paid a company to produce the website.” At this, I nodded and tried to hide the shriek of despair that threatened to escape at those words. “Self,” I said, via the magic of internal monologue, “if you end up with this job, it will be exactly three months before you try to brain yourself on the edge of the desk due to the horrors of a custom CMS.” Today, three months later, right on queue, I spent a good twenty minutes introducing my forehead to the faux-pine veneer of my cubicle desk. I’m not really an open-source kind of guy, but years have dealing with web-design companies who have developed their own content management systems have

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28/01/2011 7 Comments
Works in Progress

I guess this is why people have day-jobs, huh?

It’s been a long time since I thought hard about the thing I’m writing as I wrote it, rather than sprinting for the finish because I needed stuff to be done and sent out and justifying itself now now now! 600 words on the great-swashbuckly-lovecraft-ghoul-wahoo! novel draft this afternoon, which brings the total up to about 5,000 for the week. It feels so very slow, working like this, but I suspect it may actually be better for me – when I’m not trying to rush things and get wordcount for the sake of wordcount, I have time to start picking at phrasing and thinking about the pace and structure of the scenes. Oddly, writing slow and considered is also a means of curing myself of my addiction to semi-colons. Also, 2011 is the year I teach myself to write in third person or die trying; place your bets on whether it works, but my money’s on the latter. I’m going to reward myself with an episode of NCIS before diving into the Flotsam story and racking up some wordcount there.

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27/01/2011 No Comments
Works in Progress

Toil

‘Tis actually a horrible name for the blog post, ’cause the writing thing doesn’t actually feel much like toil this week. Not even yesterday when it took me seven hours, total, to get fifteen hundred words down across two projects. There is probably toil coming though – there’s a Flotsam deadline looming in nine and a half days – but for the moment I get to skip through the word mines surrounded by bone-white moths and singing ravens and tinkling silver bells whose chimes echo strangely in the dark and shady corners. Plus I have Leonard Cohen CDs on, which is always a source of the happy. One day I will remember that the cure for not-writing is writing, rather than having to relearn that lesson every time I stop. I recently chatted to a friend of mine who enjoys the discussion of toil on the blog, watching the numbers stack up and the reports of work done come in. I know other people who are utterly opposed to seeing such things, preferring blogs to be more than just the accumulating of wordcount. I honestly don’t really know where I stand – I often wish I could do more, writing one of those online blogs that are broad in scope and capable of depth – but the truth of the matter is that I was first drawn to blogs because it allowed me to track my favourite writers doing their thing. In public. With occasional commentary. For what it’s worth, folks

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27/01/2011 2 Comments
Works in Progress

Day Planner

Today I am: a) writing b) making plans c) washing up d) buggering off early to play DnD Last night there was write-club, whereupon I wrote about fifteen hundred words on my next Flotsam story, then sat up into the wee hours forcing myself to write 250 words on the novel project for 2011 (which is currently called Tarnished Silver Swords, but once existed under the working title of the weird lovecrafty-ghoul-swashbuckley-wahoo-novel; neither of these is workable as a final title). I thank Trent Jamieson for the reminder to do the latter, courtesy of his recent blogpost aboutgetting stuff done despite being a procrastinating slacker (which is not to say that Trent is a procrastinating slacker, just that I am and his advice came at the right point to remedy that). There has been too much not-writing in my life this January. I have another five days to rectify that.

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26/01/2011 No Comments
Big Thoughts

Actually, fuck it, I’m ranting

Every now and then publishers I respect a lot go and do something stupid, and this makes me a little sad. This weeks’ case-in-point comes courtesy of the writer’s guidelines for Ticonderoga’s latest anthology, which I read through and had a complete WTF kind of moment when I stumbled across this. A masculine tone will be favoured but not sought exclusively (i.e. avoid becoming bogged down with intricate descriptions and fancy window dressing in your world building; save your word count for a solid scene – or 2 or 3 – of conflict, action, aggression, etc). (see the addendum below) I mean, yeah, seriously, what the fuck? Setting aside the fact that anyone’s daft enough to phrase their preferences like this in an online world where x-fail has become part of the dialogue and there’s a new generation of readers (and writers) sensitive to gender issues, I actually found this kind of disappointing because it runs up against one of the things I really like about Ticonderoga – they’re a left-leaning press whose anthologies have tackled issues such as work choices/industrial relations reform and the cultural identity of immigration. They’re the press that published short fiction collections for  Angela Slatter and Kaaron Warren – two writers I’d argue do intricate description and fancy window dressing that will fucking blow you away as a reader rather than bogging down – and they’re setting up to publish a bunch of other writers who do the same in the coming year (see the forthcoming collection

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24/01/2011 20 Comments
Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

Sexy Batman

So I was going to rant tonight, because it appears there’s things in the blogosphere to rant about, but then I thought better of it all. Instead I’m just going to suggest that you all go and read the latest installment of Hark, A Vagrant and catch up with Sexy, Sexy Batman. I find myself wishing more Batman comics were like this. And now I’m going to eat leftover prawn and feta pizza from lunch.

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24/01/2011 No Comments

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