Yes, I’ve been very vid-centric lately. I acknowledge this. But, dammit, some things are sufficiently awesome that you just have to share immediately:
Between allergies, dust-clouds, lingering con-crud and deadlines I’m officially giving up on the possibility of saying anything coherant this week. Instead, I’m just going to share the earworm that’s been driving me crazy all week.
Over the years I’ve gradually noticed that the people whose creative output fascinates me the least are often the most interesting to listen to when they discuss their creative process. Today I found myself losing twenty-minutes listening to JJ Abrams talk about the role of mystery in narrative and the process. Of course, by my earlier logic, one of these days we’re going to discover that Ewe Boll is a genius.
Jason Fischer – Clarion Peep, Awesome Dude, and purveyor of zombie stories – has won the second quarter of the Writers of the Future competition and a trip to LA. The Fisch has been chasing this dream for about three years now, often coming tantalisingly close to earning a spot, and there are no words for how happy I am that he’s finally picked up the victory. Honestly, it couldn’t happen to a nicer bloke. By all rights I should be kneeling in the rain, shirt torn, playing air-guitar to November Rain in honor of this achievement (ask Jason why and maybe he’ll explain). Instead I’m blinking, bleary-eyed, into the dust-cloud of doom that seems to have enveloped Brisbane (and Sydney), and somehow it just doesn’t have the same effect.
The title’s actually a misnomer, since I’ve been operating out of my house for all four days of this year’s Gen Con Oz, but when you’re basically coming home to lapse into five hours of sleep before rising and returning to a convention it starts to feel a little like you’re living in a hotel room anyway. I’d given myself a break from the online world until Wednesday while I recovered, but once again I found myself having to link to something that’s far too cool to let it slide by. So today has been spent catching up on sleep, e-mail, and cool stuff I missed while at the con – and among the coolest stuff that happened in my absence is the review of Horn on Joy 94.9’s Outland Institute radio show. I missed out on streaming the show live due to the con, but I’m thankfully about to listen in courtesy of the fact that you can download the podcast (look for episode eleven and aim for Narelle Harris’ segment about eleven minutes in).
I’m going to break the radio silence for a moment because this is too cool not to share it. Step 1) Head on over to Vodkandlime’s livejournal and check out the “Twilighted” book-cover for Horn. Step 2) Be greatly amused.
Gen Con Australia kicks off on Thursday. It ends on Sunday afternoon. I’ll be working there, so drop past and say high if you’re around. That said, I have a mountain of work to get done in preperation and I’m behind *again* (courtesy of computer trouble again – word stopped working on the laptop. That’s two sets of computer problems in a month. I wasn’t at all manly about it, and if if this keeps up I think I’ll be writing the next novella on google-docs using my mobile phone). So I’ll see you all next Wednesday, folks, cause I’m kicking off the radio silence right about…now.
Because I’m tired and unable to articulate much today, so I give you the general mood of my week via youtube clips from the family Wainwright. ‘Cause even if my week isn’t awesome, I can share the awesome of others. 1) Anger 2) Absurdity 3) An Ill-defined longing for longing
Right what is says on the tin – it got inspired by a facebook meme but my natural love of verbage meant it raged out of control. Anyway, this is actually a pretty good summary of what the interior of my head looks like when the subject of writing comes up. Some are me-specific, some a general, and most were written down fast in order to see what the first twenty-five thoughts that came to mind actually were. I take no responsibility for accidents caused if you follow any of these hastily constructed thoughts and give the usual warnings of upcoming writer-angst (it’s been that kind of week): 1) There is no “one true way to write,” but there are several commonly touted pieces of advice that both make sense to me and largely represent an decent list of “things worth doing unless you’ve got a good reason not to.” 2) This list is not one of them. 3) There is nothing I can achieve as a writer that will silence that little voice in the back of my head urging me to do more. I will never do enough and I can always do things better. This probably isn’t a bad thing, since the alternative is stagnation. 4) Fear is the mind-killer. Many problems with getting something written can be traced back to fear of some kind. 5) Writing does not lend itself to sick days. Nor does it lend itself to holidays. It would be nice if it did,
One of those sports that still hasn’t lost its novelty – there are two new reviews out there for the dedicated Horn-spotter. The first is available online at Specusphere – as usual, there’s a random sampling to whet your appetite: Horn is a memorable, unique, and highly polished work. Spanning noir, horror, fantasy and several other sub-genres, it has widespread potential appeal. The novella is an excellent showcase of Ball’s ability as an author, and also a fine example of Twelfth Planet Press’s intriguing novella range. The other came out in the September issue of Locus magazine courtesy of their short-fiction reviewer Rich Horton: New from Australia’s Twelfth Planet Press is a first rate novella chapbook, Horn, by Peter M. Ball. Miriam Aster is a freelance detective, having blown her police career with some unprofessional behavior, but she’s still called back for certain cases as a consultant. Cases, apparently, involving visitors from Faerie. This story starts with a teenager found raped and killed, evidently by a unicorn’s horn. To her regret, the case requires Aster to deal again with her former lover, an exiled Queen of Faerie, and of course Aster still loves the other woman, but knows she can’t get back with her. But there’s a rogue unicorn loose, and maybe worse in the form of people willing to use a rogue unicorn for very nasty purposes indeed … All the traditional hardboiled attitude, mixed effectively with adark look a Faerie. Strong stuff indeed. Should probably go do some work
1) Two Reasons Angela Slatter is awesome The latest Clarkwesworld magazine has an interview with eight Emerging SF authors, including the insightful and rather startlingly talented Angela Slatter. She says some smart stuff, as do the rest of the interviewees, and it’s well worth a read. If, however, you like you’re writing advice in a more direct and focused form, I really suggest heading over to Angela’s website and read through her advice on editing. Actually, I’d advocate printing out the entire post and keeping it handy next time you’re proofing something. I’ve been lucky enough to have stuff edited/proofed by Angela before and I can say with certainty that she knows of what she speaks here. 2) Interesting Writing Advice from Across the Interwebs Still on the writing front, I’d also recommend going and taking a listen to Mary Robinette Kowal’s guest-spot on the Writing Excuses podcast. It crams four really useful pieces of advice to fiction writers (based on puppetry, interestingly enough) into the space of fifteen minutes. I transcribed them and put them in the folder where my draft of Black Candy is waiting for me to start rewriting, just as a reminder that I need to think very clearly when I start replacing all my habitual non-verbal tags that get scattered through dialogue. 3) Help Needed/Gen Con Australia Do you know someone who loves fantasy and SF authors and roleplaying games who doesn’t suffer from stage fright and will be in Brisbane between the 18th and the
The Speed Racer movie fascinates me. Not because it’s a good movie – it’s not – but because it’s made by people just smart enough to do interesting things and just dumb enough to make some very simple mistakes. As a writer, this is a combination that keeps me looking at something, wondering what the hell happened and why it all falls apart. I’ll be honest for a second – Speed Racer should be the kind of glorious failure in the style of films like Southland Tales. The Watchowski Brothers remake has a lot going for it in terms of a really strong aesthetic, a willingness to be stylized rather than naturalistic, and a moderately strong cast. It was never going to be a successful film because the choices they were making ran up against the basic demand for pseudo-realism in cinema, but at the very least it was ambitious and willing to take chances. Sadly, this is coupled with the kind of bone-headed narrative decisions that make it a fairly mundane failure rather than failed attempt at genius. Which is why I’d probably recommend people who are interested in writing should watch it, if only to see why certain things don’t work, narratively speaking. Things to pay attention to, when watching Speed Racer as a learning experience: 1) They Haven’t Decided what the film is about. Not entirely true, since on one level they’ve got this down – Speed Racer is about futuristic cars and remaking a cartoon. But
PETER’S LATEST RELEASE
RECENT POSTS
