You’ll have to forgive me if this is a touch vague today, but I didn’t really sleep last night. Not in a bad way, just one of those instances where you starting a show on DVD and figure you may as well finish things while the momentum is there. There may have been beer involved, and a particularly frustrated end to the day on Friday. It largely means that all I’m good for today is drinking coffee, listening to Misfits songs, and making idle kind of notes for stories I’ll work on tomorrow.
It’s a good way to cap off a very good week.
It’s an out-of-order way of going about it, but one of the best bits was the release of this years Locus Recommended Reading List which included Dying Young in the novelette category and Memories of Chalice among the recommended short stories. I’m particularly happy about the latter, to be honest, since I spent years circling around that particular story before it finally came together and got accepted by Electric Velocipede. The list also includes a bunch of talented Australian writers (Jason Nahrung’s blog post seems to be the best round-up of Australians on the list) and a bunch of people I know (congratulations, particularly, to Thoraiya Dyer and Tansy Raynor Roberts and probably some others that I’m missing in my sleep-addled state).
Of course, my favourite thing about any recommended reading list is seeing what isn’t included rather than what is. I always tend to go through them mentally filling in gaps, or reaching out for things that I think should be on there, but are mysteriously excluded for obscure reasons like being published two years ago, instead of last year, which really goes to show how slowly I read things these days. At the moment my personal recommended reading list from last year would consist of three things: Go read Six Months, Three Days at Tor.com, which was my favourite story of last year; track down a copy of Will Mackintosh’s Soft Apocalypses; and then beg/borrow/steal yourself a copy of Two Worlds and In Between, ’cause there are still far too few people reading Caitlin Kiernan and that makes me sad.
This list would probably change on the morrow. It’d definitely have changed by this time in 2013, simply because I’ll have caught up on more of my 2011 reading by then.
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I also meant to blog a little more extensively about the return of Write Club with the inimitable Angela Slatter. For the last couple of months Write Club has been a casualty of the holiday season. moving, and changing day-job schedules, resulting in a long gap since our last stint. We’ve also relocated to the State Library on account of the fact that Angela Slatter and I live on different ends of the city these days and neither of our domiciles are particularly suited to prolonged writing stints in the middle of the day during the Brisbane summer.
Let me just say this clearly as I can: dear god, I’m glad write club is back. The wordcount is handy, sure, but the real advantage of Write Club is the way it helps format my week and keep me on track.
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I’m going to note that I’ve paused in the writing of the above at least four times: once to stare blankly at the screen for ten minutes, once to go get lunch, and once when Astro Zombies and Skulls were played back-to-back on the MP3 playlist and I was forced to stop and appreciate them, and once to watch an entire season of 30 Rock in rapid succession. I am easily distracted yesterday today.
And now I’m off to shower and go see a Luc Besson film at GoMa. It shall be a mighty kind of day.
