It’s Getting Hot in Here…

Happy Birthday Dad

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My father turns Sixty today, so I’m going to take this opportunity to wish him a very Happy Birthday. Given the health problems he had towards the end of last year, turning sixty isn’t something we take for granted in our family anymore.

The rest of my family is already in a resort up on the Sunshine Coast, kicking the celebrations off early. I’m stuck in Brisbane until lunch time, but I’ll be disappearing after my shift at the dayjob this morning to join them.

In theory I’ll attempt to do some writing – I’ve packed Fritz the Laptop – but in practice I expect I’ll be spending time with my dad for the next 48 hours or so. We are, after all, very glad he’s around to spend time with after his  heart surgery last year.

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In totally unrelated news the web version of The Birdcage Heart went live over on the Daily Science Fiction site, for those who weren’t subscribed to the email versions last week.

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The Brisbane summer seems to be making a resurgence this week, assaulting us with the heat and humidity that has long been part of living in the city. This year summer’s been relatively mild, lacking the kind of punishing days where I turn into a puddle on the floor of my apartment, but they’ve made up for it now.

I am not a fan.

Having lived in Queensland my entire life, much of that near the coast in one form or another, I’ve always preferred winter to summer. Summer makes me sluggish and unwilling to work, and the food is generally worse, and I’m not a big fan of shorts.

I’m counting down the days until we’re done with Summer, and I’m dreaming of living somewhere colder.

Not that this is surprising. I do it every year.

Rumors of my absence may have been exagerated

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It turns out that spending two-to-three weeks writing by hand just wasn’t on the list of things I was willing to do. Fortunately this roughly coincided with the realisation that I could pick up a very cheap desktop (to replace the machine that died last September) and write it off as a business expense. It’s not as ideal as no computer problems at all – I’ve spent the last two days uploading the various programs and back-up files onto the new machine rather than working – but it has fringe benefits (hello, photoshop. I’ve missed you).

It’s a stinking hot, evil day outside my office so I’ve retreated into the air-conditioning with a pile of Primus CD and a large vat of coffee. The coffee because my sleep patterns are shot right now (going to bed at eleven, getting to sleep around 4 am). The Primus because I watched a lot of Robot Chicken in a row and it’s Les Claypool themesong reminded me that, yes, godsfuckit, they really were one of my favourite bands.

Current Project: Getting Back to Basics
Number of Stories Submitted in February: 0 of 8
Rejections Accrued in 2010: 0
Consecutive Productive Writing Days: 0
Days without coke and other soft-drinks: 0 <- Yes: FAIL
Days without chocolate: 3
Today the Spokesbear is: wishing I’d stop tooling around with the new computer and *get to goddamn work*

January is almost done

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Congratulations to Elena Gleason, whose story Erased picked up the chocolate in Fantasy Magazine’s  best story of 2008 reader poll. Congrats also to my Clarion South peep Michael Greenhut, whose story Watermark finished in the top-five, and thanks also to everyone who put in a vote for On the Finding of Photographs of My Former Loves – to my surprise, it snuck into the top five as well.

The temperature seems to have dropped to reasonable levels here in Brisbane – today I walked into my office and saw the temperature was below 30 degrees for the first time in weeks. That probably explains why the last twenty-four hours have been more productive than usual, although that could also be because I’m now loaded up with projects again after giving up January to the thesis exclusively (I suspect I’m just not built for the singular focus approach, especially not when I’m fretting about the things I’m not doing. There is still thesis work to do, quite a bit of it, but I’ve hit the point where I can’t put off other stuff anymore. There is rent to pay, if nothing else, and one can only put that off for so long).

With that, I return to work, but before I go I’m going to suggest heading over to SF Signal’s recent Mind Meld featuring Advice for Writers if you haven’t seen it already. It’s a solid read, chock-full of useful things to know.