Linkfest

Horn Spotting

PETERMBALL Works in Progress , , ,

So back in 2010 I get an email from Alisa over at Twelfth Planet  sent me an email that said, in effect, there’s some people making a TV show that’d like to use a couple of TPP books as background props.  Apparently there are contracts that needed to be signed when this kind of thing happens, which is one of those things about making television that I never really thought about, and I was being given a heads up that the permission had been granted and there was some kind of TV show which may or may not use Horn and a bunch of other Australian small press books in the background.

This was two days after my dad’s heart attack, so I mostly nodded and made sure there was nothing I needed to be doing and went back to fretting and coping with the fact that my dad was due for open heart surgery in a few days time. Like everything else that happened about that time, it kind of slipped my mind.

Today I discovered the TV show in question was actually Outland, and for the next week, if you hie yourself over to iView and watch the second episode, you can spot a copy of Horn being picked up and flicked through by Fab at about the 4:16 mark. A blink and you’ll miss it moment to be sure – I know, because I totally missed its presence in the episode until Narrelle Harris tweeted this photo in which Horn is tucked behind her book The Opposite of Life (which is, incidental, one of the most charming vampire stories I’ve ever read, and I read a lot of vampire stories).

Even without cameo’s of books I either wrote or seriously enjoyed, the second episode of Outland was all kinds of brilliant and, seriously, go fucking watch it, ’cause there’s only six episodes in this season and I really want there to be another one. If you’re trying to figure out why, I recommend checking out the Open Thread about the first two episodes over on Horden About Town where they discuss some of the meta-textual jokes that even I, in my nerdiness, managed to miss the first time around (I mean, seriously, how did I miss the wheelchair thing?).

 

The Writer in a Silly Hat

PETERMBALL Journal , , , , , , ,

I was given a particularly silly hat for Christmas, and the first thing my mother said was oh god, it’ll be up on his blog by tomorrow morning. My mother is a wise woman, but she failed to take into account the delays inevitably caused by moving house and cleaning and the other minutia of the last few weeks. Not that she’s wrong about me posting a picture here, just the time frame:

Best. Present. Ever.

The hat came about because my sister buggered off to Nepal a few months back, planning on walking to the base camp of Everest, and asked if there was anything I wanted. Usually when my sister goes places I shrug and mumble something non-committal and end up with a motley array of t-shirts when she returns, but Tibet proved to be a special case. “You know what?” I said, “I’d really dig a sherpa hat.”

The fact that she found one with its own woolly Mohawk is really just a bonus, even if she spent the entire trip with people asking her if she actually liked her brother. Now I just need winter to roll around so everyone shall know me by my resplendent blue-green headware of awesomeness. 

Until Winter, I shall content myself with writing and admiring said headware on the noggin of the Spokesbear.

#

I am, officially, relocated to a new domicile and deadline free.

The new place features somewhat tighter quarters than I’m used to, what with cramming pretty much everything I own into the one room. I’m somewhat amazed that *exactly the same bookcase* appears in the background of webcam shots despite the relocation, because apparently it’s that bookcase’s destiny to be set up opposite my computer in every place I live.

It’s also, coincidently enough, a brand new year. I don’t do resolutions and such, but I do have some plans for 2012. Not big plans, admittedly, but there’s a fairly well-sketched plan of things I’d like to write and things I’d like to read and a single credo – no damn deadlines for the first six months – dominating my approach. The first thing I’m working on are a handful of stories – mostly so I can kick the writer-brain into shape again – after which I’m disappearing back into novella land for a while.

#

I caught up with the inimitable Angela Slatter at a friends birthday party recently, and she mentioned that the Lair of the Doctor’s Brain project she’d been working on with her co-brain, L.L. Hannett, was ready to launch. I’ve been eagerly waiting for this series to hit the blogosphere for months now and it doesn’t disappoint – they’ve started big with an interview with China Miéville and a series of illustrations from Kathleen Jennings.

I’m also pretty sure that every aspiring writer in the known universe has linked to this by now, but I’m nothing if I’m not a joiner: Chuck Wendig’s 25 Things Writers Should Stop Doing (Right Fucking Now) is pretty damn spiffy. And, you know, full of smart advice in amid the swearing, as is so often the case with Wendig’s work.

And since I’m feeling a bit grumpy that the Dresden Dolls are touring and I’m not going to their Brisbane concert tomorrow night, I’ll going to link to their cover of War Pigs and say, well, fuck, go listen. It’s pretty damn rare that I actually want to go to concerts these days, what with the crowds and the young people and the drinks you have to take out a mortgage to afford, but dammit, I really wanted to go to this one and that clip is one of the reasons why.

-sigh-

Ah well, I should probably be writing things anyway.

The internet knows everything, and so I ask…

PETERMBALL Journal, Works in Progress , , ,

I was at work today, innocently doing my job, when one of my co-workers turned around asked “have you ever come across a transgender zombie story?”

At which point I allowed that a) I had not, b) google wasn’t inclined to find me one, and c) I adore my new dayjob more than any other dayjob I’ve ever had.

Still, it’s a vexing kind of question to be unable to answer in the affirmative. I fired off the question to a couple of friends in the hopes that they’ve heard something, then figured I’d ask the question here just in case someone had come across such a thing. Transgender zombies and/or protagonists appear to be fair game, so far as such things go, so if you’ve come across such a thing in your readings please drop by the comments and let me know. In short: help me, Obi-net-kenobi, you’re my only hope.

#

I’d be linking you to Catherynne Valentes not-quite-review of Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris, but it’s on livejournal and LJ has been buggy for the last few days, so I’m not entirely sure the link is going to take you where it’s supposed to take you. Should it work, I really recommend taking a gander at the review-slash-essay posted there, for it immediately makes the movie one that I absolutely must see and, I think, articulates something quite important about the reason people wander off to become artists and writers, that kind of long-term chasing down of a tribe that’s smart and passionate and engaged with the world in a very particular kind of way.

And I, as ever, want a book of Catherynne Valente essays, for they are frequently phenomenal when she posts them online and they deserve to be a book one day. I would be deeply grateful if someone would pay her to write one.

#

So, of the six killer copyediting tips delivered in this blog post, I’ve managed to internalize…two. Unfortunately, the ones I still get wrong are generally the more embarrassing options on the list. I should probably work on that, since it seems like a perfectly reasonable list of things that it’d be a good idea to learn, and my problems with apostrophes are getting quite out of control.

#

Every second Wednesday has become the bane of my writing routine. There simply isn’t time for sustained writing, just little bursts of wordage that are fit into a spare half-hour or so. I try not to begrudge Wednesdays this – I work and I go out, doing that thing where I see other people, which is presumably important for my continued status as a sane human being – but I am not built to take breaks from work. I live in fear of my own sloth, where I give in to the temptation to not-write because it’s easier, rather than force myself to put down new words.

Thursdays are meant to make up for it: a day off, a writing day, free of distractions. Yet I’m four weeks into the day job and it’s never quite become that, always winnowed away by odd jobs and far too brief a time spent writing.

Still, I’m getting better at carving out writing time. Not as good as I used to be, but better than I’ve been for much of the last twelve months, and I plan on getting quite a bit done on the morrow. I just wish I could come up with a solution for tonight that made me felt like I’d done enough to warrant going to bed at a reasonable hour tonight. I mean, I’ve written something on the Flotsam draft, which is almost certainly better than nothing, but somehow I can’t quite talk myself into believing that 250 words is a reasonable day’s work and no amount of but tomorrow I’ll finish the draft of the next story and be able to start editing seems to satisfy the spokesbear and my inner taskmaster.

This, I suspect, is because they know me too well. One good week of getting things done doesn’t mitigate of year of saying such things and not quite getting around to doing them.

I suspect it’s time to aim for five hundred words and try again. Which means I’d best get on with things, I suppose.