Yesterday I was driving around and I heard the new Regina Spektor single on the radio (not the song, “On the Radio”, that I’ve elected to post here. A different song. On the radio). That means a new Regina Spektor album’s on the way and this brings me joy.
Last week was dominated by day-job dramas; this week has been dominated by bad news (often of the medical kind) among friends and family. On the whole, I’d rather go back to the job-dramas.
Black Candy Draft Projected Total: 80,000 Total Words to Date: 19,345 Words Done in Previous 24 48-hour 12 Days:11,057 (although some of that was scenes I’d pre-written and stitched into this draft) Deadline: July 23rd As you may have deduced from the lack of updates recently, this week was full of badness – day job issues, contracts evaporating without warning, and the general financial angst of being marginally employed all combined to ensure that the most productive thing I’ve done for the last three days was pull my lazy butt of the couch and go shopping. Fortunately the ever-awesome Angela Slatter was heading around for a writing session this morning and I wrote about two and a half new words between cooking lunch, chatting about writing, and eating chocolate. Interestingly I’m more-or-less on-track when it comes to the plot-to-wordcount layout I had in my head that said twenty-K was the end of the first act (and it is, more or less,
I’ve been thinking about my obsessive love of cover-versions this week, and near as I can tell this was the first cover I ever recognized as both a) a cover and b) far more awesome than the original.
I’m feeling a little out of sorts today, which means it’s time for another dancing monkey post. This time courtesy of deepfishy (aka JJ Irwin) over on LJ: This may veer too close to writing, but: tropes you’re drawn to in tv shows or films. (For instance, for myself I get a lot of joy out of variations on and subversions of the Defective or Exotic Detective – Life, Psych, Nero Wolfe, The Dresden Files, Foyle’s War…) Originally I thought I was going to have trouble answering this – my inclination towards SF aside, there doesn’t always seem to be a lot of continuity to the types of shows I find myself watching. Naturally I went to TV Tropes and plugged in a few of my favourite shows to check this and quickly discovered it wasn’t the case. As such: I’m probably overly-drawn to the Bunny Ears Lawyer trope, but primarily in TV shows that stack their decks pretty heavily
So the nominations for the Australian Ditmar Awards have been released after a few weeks of my friends-list being packed with reminders to send in nominations and reminders about the 2008 works that are eligible. Unlike the Aurealis Awards, which I followed for years before I actually started writing SF, the Ditmars are something of a mystery to me – I lack the context to understand how they fit into the wider scheme of Australian fan culture and speculative fiction. I figured I’d get a chance to puzzle that out at while attending Conjecture, since that’s where they’re awarded this year. Then the list came out: Best New Talent ————— Peter M. Ball Felicity Dowker Jason Fischer Gary Kemble Amanda Pillar And you know what? Context for understanding or no, that’s kind of cool. I’m going to stump for the Fisch to win, of course, since he’s both a fine writer and the man who is putting me up during the con, but as
Because, seriously, how are you living your life without a regular injection of the Spazzys?
Try and describe the taste of coke (regular or diet). Then go and drink a mouthful, to see how accurate your recollection of the taste is. Bonus points if you can do it without falling back on either the fizz or the use of cola as a flavour descriptor. I’ve been trying to do this – and failing – for most of the day.
Data-Point the First: The latest issue of Apex Magazine is out, which includes my story Clockwork, Patchwork and Ravens. Go forth, read, and while you’re there consider picking up some of the fine works of fiction Apex Publishing has out (I’m currently stroking the cover of Open Your Eyes, which showed up in yesterday’s post and gets coveted like a covety thing because I haven’t yet had time to read it). Data-Point the Second: Edits for Horn rolled in last night, which means I’m going to be AWOL for a few days longer (baring posts where I show up and pimp stuff, like this one, but I figure you’ll forgive me my exhibitionist tendencies by now). Data-Point the Third: The blog silence up to this point has been generously provided by a head cold and a mild fever that kept me awake. Avoided the blog because I figured endless posts of I’m sick weren’t that interesting (and I sufficiently grumpy
Black Candy Draft Projected Total: 80,000 Total Words to Date: 8,288 Words Done in Previous 24 48-hour Period: 2,037 Deadline: July 23rd Spent twenty-four hours wibbling over what I’d done, trying to work my way into the project. Cut what I’d done for the second chapter (not deleted, just cut away for the moment and set aside until I hit a narrative beat where the events feel more appropriate), then spent the last twenty-four re-starting the chapter from scratch. Much happier this time around, even if it does give me negative progress on the wordcount. I predict this will happen a couple of times in the drafting process for this one – I’m sufficiently clueless about what I’m doing that I’ll happily rewrite and expand upon existing scenes from the novella-length-draft without realising that they shouldn’t be happening yet.
As grass-roots movements go, this is kind of cool. 2013 Update: The post that inspired this is largely dead and gone now, but the basic theme was still pretty cool – help out small press horror publishers by going and buying a damn book already. It came with some handy suggestions, too, most of which are out of date. Oddly, my suggestion below? Still going strong four years later. In fact, they’re going stronger. ‘Course, not being a particularly straight-forward-out-and-out-horror kind of guy, the only company on their list I’ve got any experience with as a reader is Apex (whose bailiwick is SF-Horror fusion, and thus situates itself firmly in my mental cross-hairs as both a writer and a reader). Still, I’m all for people spending money on books, so for those of you on my friendslist who are inclined to set aside $20 for the small press horror industry I make the following recommendation: my inner pulp-geek has a fierce and hardcore
It is Friday. I have a hankering for some Sonic Youth. I blame the Gilmore Girls. And, no, that’s not a random non sequitur – for a fluffy, family-friendly show the Gilmore Girls is loaded with Sonic Youth references (and occasional guest stars).
