One last outburst before we go to radio silence

My attempt to roll out the productivity and conquer The Fear hit a road-block yesterday – what seemed to be a minor computer problem (power jack coming loose from the laptop casing) has rolled out into a terrifying ordeal which will culminate in the absence of a computer in the house for 5-to-1o working days […]

And lo, I could not think of a title

Mornin’ peeps. The laptop’s on battery power* at the moment so I’m racing against time to get a blog-post written before the computer yawns and says “sleepy now, going away.” Yesterday I wrote 381 words on a story, poked at another to see where it fell over**, cleared out 50-odd e-mails had been waiting for […]

Lists and Planning

1000 words of redraftage on Black Candy last night. It appears that the “hours per day” writing metric I’ve been used to get the Cold Cases draft in is going to be replaced by the more familiar “wordcount needed before I can sleep” metric. I suspect my process may be seasonal – Brisbane is too damn […]

Goal-Setting

Things I’m going to do this week: 1) Write a short story 2) Re-establish my writing routines after letting them fall by the wayside during the march towards the deadline 3) Write some blog posts that don’t involve the word “novella” 4) Work out a series of goals for December that are flexible enough to […]

This is what I do in the absence of cats

Still off putting the finishing touches on the Cold Cases draft before I hand it over to Twelfth Planet Press. I should be back on Friday, being my usual blathering self, but until then have a picture of the Spokesbear doing his part: And now I’m back to the manuscript, for the spokesbear is a […]

Watch out for the Deadlines, they move when you’re not looking

Had an e-mail conversation with the publisher which basically amounted to “I’m going to be busy this week, so you might as well take a few extra days if you want them.” To which I replied “well, yeah, okay,” and promptly fell asleep for much of Sunday instead of rushing to get the edits finalised. […]

IAF Auctions/Interfictions 2

Alongside the release of Interfictions II comes the Interstatial Arts Foundation Auction featuring art pieces, jewelry and other works based upon the stories in the two Interfiction’s anthologies. A full list of the pieces is being rolled out on the IAF Auctions blog over the coming month, but allow me to call attention to Item […]

Words, words, words (With bonus Angela Slatter Interview)

Before I begin, let me direct you to this: Marshal Payne’s Super-Sekrit Clubhouse has a new interview with my Write Club peep Angela Slatter, which should give you a pretty good insight into why I usually use words like “awesome” and “inimitable” when discussing both her and her writing. Angela remains one of those folks […]

Interfictions Two is out…now

‘Tis true, the Interfictions Two anthology has been released like a releasy thing (sorry, hard morning at the keyboard and I’m all out of simile). You can pick it up in hardcopy or DRM free PDF depending on your preferences. You can read the story by me, should you really want to, but personally I’m diving straight […]

16 Days

On Friday night, during the Write Club recently documented over on Angela Slatter’s website, I finished the first draft of Cold Cases. Afterwards, I looked at the messy first draft state that’s so familiar after years of first draft, and immediately started fretting. There were sixteen days until the deadline. My usual rewriting process, particularly […]

This weekend: the Writefest

First, a little pimping: The Queensland Writer’s Centre has announced the November Writing Frenzy, a month-long initiative to get people writing whether they’re engaging in the month-long madness that is NaNoWriMo or just looking to get a project done. Part of the program consists of several Writing Races held on the Australian Writers Marketplace Online […]

Project Update: Cold Cases

There’s usually a point in a project where I stumble over it’s identity. Not a theme or a plot or a character conflict, but a moment where I can suddenly look at the piece and realise why I’m writing. Sometimes it’s easy – Horn got defined as as the book about unicorns for people who hate […]