Journal

Day three of feeling under the weather, courtesy of the throat infection that laid me low on Sunday. Finally taking my doctors advice and going to bed to twelve consecutive hours, letting the panadol and amoxycillin to do their job (it wasn’t the throat ache that did me in; it was the terrifying ear-ache that woke me up at five in the morning).

Which means I’ll be taking it easy over on this blog, but I’ve been out and about on other people’s blogs over the past couple of weeks, so if you find yourself wishing for a Man Vs. Bear hit, I’ve got you covered. For instance, Over on Karen Miller’s new blog, I’ve written a little thing called THE FOUR THINGS NO-ONE TELLS YOU ABOUT HAVING A NEW BOOK OUT. Stick around and check out the rest of the posts while you’re there – there’s a bunch of cool guest-posts in addition to Karen talking about her own work.

If you’re one of the handful of people who read my blog but not Angela Slatter’s, you may also have missed the short interview I did about Exile a few weeks back where I talked writing, influences, and long-term plans for the series. Once again, I recommend sticking around and seeing what else is posted there – Angela’s been running a great series of interviews with horror writers associated with the recently released Spectral Book of Horror Stories that’s well worth checking out.

Then there’s always the option of picking up the book itself, if you haven’t yet done so. After all, it’s statistically proven that buying an authors work is one of the most effective ways of encouraging them to produce more.

See you tomorrow, peeps.

So here’s the thing: I’m sick this week. Probably not the entire week, but certainly for the 48 hours where I normally write my blog posts for the week (aka The Weekend). I am lying in my bed, sweating and coughing up unpleasant substances. I am all aches and nausea. It feels like someone has replaced my lungs with flesh backs of gravel and razor-blades.

I despise being sick.

We live in a culture where people make jokes about man flu and shit, but that’s never really been my thing. I will power on through the flu. I spent years of my life working as a contractor and casual employee while I did my degree; if I didn’t work, I didn’t get paid.

If I didn’t get paid, I didn’t pay rent.

And I always paid my rent. The idea of running late on those payments was unthinkable to me, no matter what happened. I’d load up on cold and flu tablets and teach classes, despite having the kind of head-cold that made me sound like an adult character from the Peanuts cartoons. It wasn’t pretty, and I pity the poor students who had to listen to me, but it got the job done.

Basically, all this one of those things that no-one ever tells you when you pick writer (or, really, any freelance gig) as your career plan. You don’t get sick days, really. You don’t get holidays. You just get…well, periods of time where you do the best you can while feeling under the weather, and the occasional bout of illness where your body objects to you ignoring all the illnesses.

Which is why I may be sweaty, aching, and struggling to breathe, but  I’ll still drag Shifty Silas the Laptop to my sickbed and try to peck out some word-count on the current project and get a couple of blog posts done. I may have a day-job that gives me sick leave these days (and hell, that’s pretty damn shiny), but every instinct I’ve got says I should be working.

Writers with new books out should not be trusted with blogs and social media. Every impulse you have is basically starts screaming talk about the book…talk about the book…Book! Book! Book! BOOOOOOOOOK! and you lose any real sense of scale you have about the line between promotion and…well, being a little sad.

So I am going to mention Exile is out and available from many fine perveyors of electronic reading material. And I am going to mention the interview I did with the Apocalypse Ink folks about adapting Flotsam to a novella series and why I chose the Gold Coast as the setting.

But I’m just going to do it all subtle-like, you know? ‘Cause this post ain’t about me. It’s about you guys.I’ve got a humble request:

TELL ME ABOUT THE COOL SHIT YOU’VE GOT GOING ON RIGHT NOW.

What have you been up to that you’re really excited about? What have you got coming up in the near future that you’re all, like, OMG THIS IS GOING TO BE ALL THE AWESOMES! Tell me about the books you’ve got coming out, the fitness goals you’ve just started hitting, or the thing in your life that’s bringing you joy at the moment. Pimp the shit out of your projects in the comments, if that’s your thing, ’cause right now I want to hear about other’s people’s projects and stop the obessessive mental EXILE loop that’s going through my head.

Big or small, let me know. What cool shit are you up too?