ECLECTIC PROJECTS BLOG
Journal

On Signatures, Land Lines, and The Things that Become Anachronisms

I spent the weekend going through page-proofs of stories I wrote a decade ago, and one of the things that struck me were plot elements that seem anachronistic to me ten years later. The main culprit was Briar Day, which features two ex-lovers talking on the phone will all manner of chaotic things have them trapped in their respective houses. 2007 wasn’t that long ago, but it was still an age where smart-phones were just coming to prominence, logging on to social media still seemed like a shiny, new experience, and you could still set a story where getting news from a 6:00 PM report on TV seemed more logical than anything else. All the communication takes place through landlines, with no chance of knowing who is calling before you answer, and the story’s engagement with the more toxic elements of masculinity seems quaint given the rise of MRAs, GamerGate, and everything else in the years since it first saw publication. Twelve hours after finishing the proofs – and talking myself out of rewriting the story simply because it all seemed so old-fashioned to me now – I woke up to the news that Mastercard is starting to phase out signatures as a form of credit card security. It’s weird to think that signatures are going the way of landline phones, but it makes all kinds of sense. Signatures are a tool of a bygone age, in terms of maintaining security, and I can’t remember the last time I actually

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23/10/2017 No Comments
Sunday Circle

The Sunday Circle: What Are You Working On This Week?

The Sunday Circle is the weekly check-in where I ask the creative-types who follow this blog to weigh in about their goals, inspirations, and challenges for the coming week. The logic behind it can be found here. Want to be involved? It’s easy – just answer three questions in the comments or on your own blog (with a link in the comments here, so that everyone can find them). After that, throw some thoughts around about other people’s projects, ask questions if you’re so inclined. Be supportive above all. Then show up again next Sunday when the circle updates next, letting us know how you did on your weekly project and what you’ve got coming down the pipe in the coming week (if you’d like to part of the circle, without subscribing to the rest of the blog, you can sign-up for reminders via email here). MY CHECK-IN What am I working on this week? I’m fleshing out my notes on the first chapter of the thesis exegesis, refining the first act of the thesis novella, and doing a deep dive on the planning for a Brain Jar project, Hell Track, where I try revising the current plan and locking things down the how-and-why of all the character actors. What’s inspiring me this week? I’ve been continuing my reading of the hardboiled detective cannon over the last week, picking up Mickey Spillane’s first novel, I, The Jury. The book’s copy draws a connection between Spillane’s Mike Hammer and current character’s

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22/10/2017 12 Comments
Sunday Circle

The Sunday Circle: What Are You Working On This Week?

The Sunday Circle is the weekly check-in where I ask the creative-types who follow this blog to weigh in about their goals, inspirations, and challenges for the coming week. The logic behind it can be found here. Want to be involved? It’s easy – just answer three questions in the comments or on your own blog (with a link in the comments here, so that everyone can find them). After that, throw some thoughts around about other people’s projects, ask questions if you’re so inclined. Be supportive above all. Then show up again next Sunday when the circle updates next, letting us know how you did on your weekly project and what you’ve got coming down the pipe in the coming week (if you’d like to part of the circle, without subscribing to the rest of the blog, you can sign-up for reminders via email here). MY CHECK-IN What am I working on this week? This week I’m revising the first 5,000 words of my thesis novella, do the paperwork for the American tax system that will allow me to get Brain Jar’s books into a bunch of the sales systems, setting up the options that will allow me to sell books here on the site, and putting together a plan for the first chapter of the theory side of my thesis. What’s inspiring me this week? I’m doing a lot of novella reading at the moment, nailing down the structure now that my brain seems to default to a

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15/10/2017 13 Comments
News & Upcoming Events

Coming Full Circle with Brain Jar Press

I’ve spent the last few months preparing for my major project in 2018: launching Brain Jar Press and getting its first book ready for release. I did my first stint with indie publishing back in 2005. It’s strange, looking back, because indie publishing hadn’t really taken hold in fiction publishing yet and I was still a few years away from writing fiction anyway. I focused on short, useful products for the D20 system, the open-sourced rules for the edition of Dungeons and Dragons that was in vogue way back then. It taught me a lot about the difference between writing and publishing, and it shaped the way I thought about everything I did in writing after that. 2005 is another world, given the pace publishing moves at these days. We didn’t call it indie publishing back then – I set out to be a micropress, producing content by me and a small group of other people, and in the space of two years we managed to get out 50 odd products. I had a blast, and I enjoyed the process of taking a book from a raw idea to a finished product, and it represents the single-most focused chunk of time I ever had writing because I knew where everything I did fit into the overall plan. I made a pretty good chunk of money, too, courtesy of some forward thinking and an attempt to hit niches that needed to be filled. The products I got rebadged after the end

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10/10/2017 3 Comments
Sunday Circle

The Sunday Circle: What Are You Working On This Week?

The Sunday Circle is the weekly check-in where I ask the creative-types who follow this blog to weigh in about their goals, inspirations, and challenges for the coming week. The logic behind it can be found here. Want to be involved? It’s easy – just answer three questions in the comments or on your own blog (with a link in the comments here, so that everyone can find them). After that, throw some thoughts around about other people’s projects, ask questions if you’re so inclined. Be supportive above all. Then show up again next Sunday when the circle updates next, letting us know how you did on your weekly project and what you’ve got coming down the pipe in the coming week (if you’d like to part of the circle, without subscribing to the rest of the blog, you can sign-up for reminders via email here). MY CHECK-IN What am I working on this week? The final phase of Project Countdown hits its end this week, as I finally get Brain Jar Press officially started and prepare The Birdcage Heart and Other Strange Tales so I can open it up to pre-orders on November 1 and delivery by November 30. This means finalising the copy, setting up the files for the print edition, and running through a pre-launch checklist to make sure I’ve got everything ready to go. It’s a bit of a soft launch, as I’ll be working on the press in earnest in 2018, but I wanted to get

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08/10/2017 24 Comments
Journal

When you run a con, you’re never really not-running a conference…

In the weeks before a major event, you never really switch off. You just power down for a bit, waiting for the next call where you leap into action and get things done. We are five weeks out from GenreCon, and it’s my sixth go-around running a big event, so I know what to expect from this bit. I know that I cannot be trusted with an iron, because we’ve entered the period where I will just leave it on. I know I’ll climb aboard the wrong train and go 25 minutes out of my way before it occurs to me that I should be home by now. The nightmares have started and the constant, low-key adrenaline has set in. People keep reassuring me that things will be fine, and I’m about 99% sure that they will be, and event like GenreCon is a lot of moving parts and this is the period where I’m not responsible for all of them. There’s a lot of handing off to others and waiting for news to filter back, and there’s a lot of points where people who aren’t familiar with the con start interacting with systems and processes. This is the point where we start finding out what I’ve got right this year, and what can be improved next time. It’s the point where I am on alert at all times, in case I can circumvent just one more thing and keep it all running smoothly. I play a lot of computer

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06/10/2017 No Comments
Sunday Circle

The Sunday Circle: What Are You Working On This Week?

The Sunday Circle is the weekly check-in where I ask the creative-types who follow this blog to weigh in about their goals, inspirations, and challenges for the coming week. The logic behind it can be found here. Want to be involved? It’s easy – just answer three questions in the comments or on your own blog (with a link in the comments here, so that everyone can find them). After that, throw some thoughts around about other people’s projects, ask questions if you’re so inclined. Be supportive above all. Then show up again next Sunday when the circle updates next, letting us know how you did on your weekly project and what you’ve got coming down the pipe in the coming week (if you’d like to part of the circle, without subscribing to the rest of the blog, you can sign-up for reminders via email here). MY CHECK-IN What am I working on this week? With five weeks to go, my brain is largely focused on GenreCon logistics and planning out work for the post-GenreCon writing period so I can bounce back fast and get to work. My only writing focus this week is doing some rewrites on Project: Red ahead of meeting my supervisor. What’s inspiring me this week? Rewatching Game of Thrones with my partner, and I’m becoming increasingly appreciative of the way the series frames its conflicts. There is almost always a series of scenes early in the season that will be mirrored in the later parts,

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01/10/2017 14 Comments
Sunday Circle

The Sunday Circle: What Are You Working On This Week?

The Sunday Circle is the weekly check-in where I ask the creative-types who follow this blog to weigh in about their goals, inspirations, and challenges for the coming week. The logic behind it can be found here. Want to be involved? It’s easy – just answer three questions in the comments or on your own blog (with a link in the comments here, so that everyone can find them). After that, throw some thoughts around about other people’s projects, ask questions if you’re so inclined. Be supportive above all. Then show up again next Sunday when the circle updates next, letting us know how you did on your weekly project and what you’ve got coming down the pipe in the coming week (if you’d like to part of the circle, without subscribing to the rest of the blog, you can sign-up for reminders via email here). MY CHECK-IN What am I working on this week? Last week week was rough on the writing front, courtesy of two projects moving into their final quarter at the same time and the looming point where GenreCon starts to take over my thinking. I’ve hit the point where raw word count ceases to be a useful benchmark, so this week I’m taking those to projects apart and setting up a list of scenes that either need to be revised or created anew. What’s inspiring me this week? I finished watching the first season of The Tudors and reading/watching Game of Thrones in the same

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24/09/2017 17 Comments
Sunday Circle

The Sunday Circle: What Are You Working On This Week?

The Sunday Circle is the weekly check-in where I ask the creative-types who follow this blog to weigh in about their goals, inspirations, and challenges for the coming week. The logic behind it can be found here. Want to be involved? It’s easy – just answer three questions in the comments or on your own blog (with a link in the comments here, so that everyone can find them). After that, throw some thoughts around about other people’s projects, ask questions if you’re so inclined. Be supportive above all. Then show up again next Sunday when the circle updates next, letting us know how you did on your weekly project and what you’ve got coming down the pipe in the coming week (if you’d like to part of the circle, without subscribing to the rest of the blog, you can sign-up for reminders via email here). MY CHECK-IN What am I working on this week? Still running through the mix of projects this week.Both Project Beeman and Project Red are in the final neck this week and next, and I have to keep reminding myself that the final scenes never feel right on a first draft because they’re victim of all the problems in the earlier drafts. This means one of the big task that’s occupying my attention is fleshing out Project Beeman and doing some corrective rewrites on a bunch of scenes that are using the wrong POV or simply don’t work after the story changed around them. What’s inspiring

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17/09/2017 2 Comments
Writing Advice - Craft & Process

Getting Shit Done is Always Subjective

If there’s a pattern in my writing routine that remains unassailable, it’s this: Thursdays are the hardest days of the week. It’s rare that I get a day where writing is the sole thing I’m doing – there is always thesis work, and meetings, things that need doing for GenreCon and spending time with my girlfriend – but Thursdays are inevitably the day where the balance tips towards not-writing. It’s the day I spend six hours at work, the evening in which I will go game with my friends, and it’s often the evening where my girlfriend and I will abscond to the local sushi place for pre-game dinner. On Thursdays, I get stuff written before work. Yesterday, I managed about two thousand words, which is a pretty fucking efficient day given there was only about two hours of writing time before I had to jump on a train. It just felt like a failure, in many respects, because the rest of the working week I can usually manage twice as many words before my brain grinds to a halt and refuses to do more. Everything else that gone done in that day didn’t register, because my brain is focused on stories and deadlines and thinking through what needs to be done when. Productivity is subjective. A year ago, getting two thousands words done on a work day would have seemed like a monumentally awesome thing. I would have given myself a mental high-five and been incredibly pleased with myself.

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15/09/2017 1 Comment
Sunday Circle

The Sunday Circle: What Are You Working On This Week?

The Sunday Circle is the weekly check-in where I ask the creative-types who follow this blog to weigh in about their goals, inspirations, and challenges for the coming week. The logic behind it can be found here. Want to be involved? It’s easy – just answer three questions in the comments or on your own blog (with a link in the comments here, so that everyone can find them). After that, throw some thoughts around about other people’s projects, ask questions if you’re so inclined. Be supportive above all. Then show up again next Sunday when the circle updates next, letting us know how you did on your weekly project and what you’ve got coming down the pipe in the coming week (if you’d like to part of the circle, without subscribing to the rest of the blog, you can sign-up for reminders via email here). MY CHECK-IN What am I working on this week? I mentioned a whole bunch of things in Friday’s post that are still very much on the cards, but my priority for the coming week is running down the checklist of things that need to be done to get Project: Countdown finalised by the end of September. Splitting my focus continues to work for me. Three of the five writing projects that get my time on a daily basis have deadlines within the next three months and all are ahead of where I expected to be at this point. I had a big epiphany about Project

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10/09/2017 5 Comments
Journal

Things I Am Currently Doing, September 8 2017 Edition

Sitting in the UQ postgraduate room, waiting until midday when I will go and meet with my supervisor about the work I’ve done while she was away at WorldCon. Happily, I can report that there’s been some movement in my thinking about Dramatic vs. Iconic characters in series works that will be useful to explore in my creative project, and I’m on track to finish the first of my novella drafts by the time we hit the end of September. Working on said novella draft, dubbed Project: Red in my to-do list. The current word-count is spread the full length of the project, mapping out the plot and its movement, so much of what’ remains is going through to flesh out scenes and make them make sense. Working on Project: Gladiator, which will be the first in a series of short, very pulpy novels that I may-or-may-not have danced around the idea of writing a few times on social media. Currently one-sixth of the way through and just sorting out the voice issues – I’m starting to deploy present tense, as this is very much trying to capture a B-movie feel and present tense is the tense of film treatments and scripts. Working on Project: Beeman, which started out as a novella and is probably going to trundle into short novel territory. Proofing The Birdcage Heart and Other Strange Tales, a collection of short fiction that I put together to test some ideas I was reading about for the thesis and

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08/09/2017 1 Comment

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