Black Dog: A Biography

Things that Happened While I Was Otherwise Distracted

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I’ve been distracted of late – either by trying to get the latest version of Cold Cases ready or hole-in-my-head drama depending of the day –  and I somehow managed to miss a whole heap of stuff happening around the traps.

1) The latest edition of the Terra Incognita Podcast is up, featuring me reading my story Black Dog: A Biography that came out in the Interfictions II anthology last year. Unlike most of the previous podcasts of my work this one actually involved me recording the reading myself, an experience that forced me to realise exactly how inarticulate I am in the verbal form (seriously; apparently I drop the consonants out of words and rely on vowel sounds and inflections to get things right, and we do not speak of how many times I had to restart things in order to avoid this).

2) Angela Slatter’s Brisneyland by Night is the feature story over at the Twelth Planet Podcast at the moment, which pleases me greatly for reasons that may or may not become apparent if you’ve read Horn. Brisneyland is part of the forthcoming Sprawl anthology from TPP.

3) My sister returned live and well from her trek over the Kokoda Trail yesterday. Notable primarily because my parents didn’t send me crazy with phone-calls when there was news of trouble in the area, and because she returned bearing coffee beans ready for my caffeinated consumption.

4) My doctor continues to taunt me by having me come in for appointments where he doesn’t remove my stitches, thus prolonging the wait until I can finally *wash my damn hair again*. To be fair, this is largely because he took all the stitches out last week and I immediately started bleeding like a stuck pig, but my head itches dammit and the ease-of-care was half the reason I shaved my head a few weeks back.

5) The yearly rejection counts holds steady at 7; the yearly acceptance count rises to 1; the number of stories ready to go out into the world is about to rise by 2. These statistics do not support getting to 100 rejections by the end of the year, but I’m about to dissappear and house-sit for the month of July and I plan to get a *lot* of writing done while I’m there.

IAF Auctions/Interfictions 2

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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 4 on the list, Mia Nutick’s Black Dog Forever, which is based on my story in IF2:

http://iafauctions.com/interfictions-2-auction-4/…

I don’t know about you, but I file this under “cool.” Go forth and peruse the other awesomeness on offer, for all sales go towards the IAF. Hell, let me just quote for this bit: “The Interfictions auctions have become a major aspect of the Interstitial Arts Foundation’s fundraising efforts, allowing the organization to fund other interstitial arts projects, including future Interfictions anthologies. Please join us in celebrating the anthology and support the Interstitial Arts Foundation by bidding and spreading the word.”

Interfictions II has also racked up its first review courtesy of Charles Tan’s Bibliophile Stalker blog if you’re still wondering about the book itself.

And with that, dear internet peeps, I disappear back into the morass of the Cold Cases manuscript draft in an attempt to kill the damn thing off before it *eats my goddamn brain*. For if I don’t, the spokesbear get’s angry, and the bears got paws, man. Don’t be fooled by the apparent fuzziness and the styrofoam bean filling, the bear’s got paws.

Yep, the internets are full of stuff I’ve been involved with this week…

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…so I may as well go with the hat-trick when it comes to blatant acts of self-promotion this week and mention the following:

1) The Coming Dark at the Internet Review of Science Fiction

A long-ish article about the apocalypse in its varied form, put together by my write-club peep Angela Slatter and featuring a bunch of talented Aussie writers (plus me, who is pretty lucky to be sounding coherent given that I was drafting responses to these questions during Gen Con Oz a few weeks back. Not to self – don’t agree to deadlines that coincide with conventions you’re working at).

Spec-fic writers tend towards the strange, the weird, the unpleasant—that’s their writing, not their personalities. We’ve had the apocalypse penciled in for a while now, so how are some of us going about documenting the coming dark? How is our changing, frayed environment affecting the writing of authors on our side of the literary divide?

A small chunk (really a thin, dietary slice) of these folk grudgingly agreed to answer some questions whilst waiting for the sun to burn and the moon to crash. So I locked them in a small room, put the kettle on and gave them some homemade biscuits to distract them. The subjects ranged across scary strangling vines, whether the environment really is out to get us, and the Age of the Puffin. The writers gromphing down the custard kisses and jam drops (and muttering about mandatory detention) are Deborah Biancotti, Kaaron Warren, Peter Ball and Jason Fischer. Mad Max

And for the record, I’d totally support Jason’s theory about the ascent of the puffin.

2) Interfictions Two Available for Pre-order (Due for November Release)

If you’re left wondering exactly what an interfiction is, you can probably get a good taste of the style by looking over the anthology’s online annex, featuring a bunch of free stories that supplement the anthology. Or you can go check out the Interstitial Arts Foundation  which tends to be full of interesting people talking about the ways genres intersect and mutate (check out the essays, but be prepared to lose to day of your life as you move from one to the next).

Or you can just take the my word, biased as it is, and pre-order based on the fact that the first anthology kicked nine kids of butt. I mean, even if you aren’t a particular fan of the story I’ve got in there, the book contains new work by folks like Jeffery Ford and Brian Francis Slattery, and I’d happily shell out the cash for a copy based on those two facts alone 🙂