There’s an interesting post over on Lifehacker about the cost of electricity in Australia and why it’s unlikely to fall any time soon. I’m linking to it because how electricity is priced tends to one of those mysterious things that people blame political parties for, without truly understanding how it works, and it’s useful to […]
It’s a bright, sunny Monday where I woke up early and got to work on writing projects first thing, getting a bunch of stuff done before I sit down to write this blog post. It’s cool enough that I notice when I walk around without socks on, but not so cold that I regret this […]
I woke up this morning and mainlined Rihanna’s Work in the hopes of easing my way into marking. Mostly, it resulted in sitting there thinking that the genres we once thought of as “popular” grew increasingly more interesting once the mass market collapsed and there was no need to produce hits that were palatable to everyone. […]
Two links, to start with. First, Lifehacker has a really interesting post about finding your real goals by asking why you want/do certain things, which is one of those things I urge writers to do an awful lot in You Don’t Want To Be Published. It’s also a remarkably useful skill in other aspects of […]
The marking continues, moving into the final third, but things have now reached the Heart of Darkness stage. The cycle of the last week has been pretty consistent: I grade papers until my brain fries, then flake out in front of the TV watching bad movies until I fall asleep. There’s been no time for writing or […]
Yesterday was my favourite kind of winter morning. Cold enough that it was pleasurable to hide beneath the blankets for a while; warm enough that I could get up, shower, then spend the morning without shoes and socks on as I padded worked on the laptop. I like having cold feet as I work. It’s […]
I followed a link to an open call from a new publishing company today. They set up writers guidelines telling prospective writers what they’d like to see submitted, but neglected to mention a pay rate. The comments thread on their submission guidelines involved two people asking about pay rates explicitly, and both times the editor/publisher […]
I woke late this morning, allowing myself a sleep in after binge watching teen movies with my partner overnight. It didn’t start that way. We’d kicked off with Gods of Egypt, Alex Proyas’ take on the sword-and-sandal epic fantasy, which felt an awful lot like someone’s Dungeons and Dragons game rendered on screen. The D&D […]
I wanted to start this entry with I have just come back from a weekend in the mountains, but we returned from the mountain on Sunday and the fact that it’s now Tuesday renders the opening inaccurate. Instead, today’s the day when my brain returned from the mountains, kicking back into gear after three days away […]
I broke out my RSS reader last night while sitting on the couch with my partner. I’ve been using Newsblur for tracking blogs ever since Google Reader shut down, and part of me still holds a grudge against Google for deciding that RSS was an archaic bit of technology they no longer wanted to support. […]
It’s 3:30 AM and the insomnia has set in, creeping in behind a mild anxiety moment that hit about six hours ago. It’s 3:30 AM and the night sky is a dark, luscious shade of indigo that sits above the darker silhouettes of trees and houses and hills. It’s 3:30 AM and I wish the […]
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 […]
