Linkfest

18 Days ’til Worldcon

PETERMBALL Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption , , , , ,

– There’s a bit of this going on this morning, for I’ve had my second short story acceptance for the year. Details to  come once I’ve signed contracts and such, but it looks like this one might see publication sooner rather than later.

– If you’re not following the Drive-By Interviewsover at Angela Slatter’s blog, well, you really should.

– Ditto The Coode Street Podcastfeaturing Jonothan Stahan and Gary K. Wolfe. There’s something immeasurably pleasurable about getting to hear two very knowledgeable people talk about the history of SF, publishing, reviewing, and (perhaps most importantly) the BOOKS YOU DON’T NEED TO READ in order to understand out field. After listening to one of their earlier episodes, I feel myself utterly absolved of having to finish the rather dire Princess of Mars.

– And, hell, lets throw out the rather fine fortnightly podcast from the Galactic Suburbia crew, for I’m a fan of that too.

– Also, if you’re interested in scoring a free copy of the rather fine zombie novella, After the World: Gravesend, you might try the zombie haiku contest that author Jason Fischer is running at the moment. Entries close this Thursday.

– Right, okay, so I’ve got the pimp hat firmly on at the moment. What can I say – the internet is full of peeps doing interesting things of late.

Furnace Room Lullabye

PETERMBALL Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption , , ,

Since it came up in comments on in the livejournal feed, I’m going to make quick mention of this.

I can understand the desire to make fun of country music, because much of it isn’t my thing and there are far too many examples of bad country music out there (especially in Australian, where the genre deserves to be razed to the ground merely for the existence of Slim Dusty). But it’s worth remembering that for every ten or eleven bad examples  there is at least one good, often lurking in the background, that wouldn’t exist if we put up with the genre as a whole. I mean, country music gave us the genre of rockabilly (which was good) which in turn gave us The Living End (which was not). It gave us Johnny Cash covering Nine Inch Nails tunes and giving them a tenderness they never would have had in their original incarnation. I will argue tooth and nail that Country Music as a genre should be allowed to stick around for bit without being mocked.

I mean, if we eliminate the scourge of country music, we eliminate the possibility of Neko Case:

And honestly, there are some prices that just aren’t worth paying.
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Current Writing Metrics
Consecutive Days Writing (500+ words): 4
New Short Stories Sent Into the Wild: 9/30
Rejections in 2010: 12/100
Black Candy Word Count (Finish Date: 31st August)

Things that Happened While I Was Otherwise Distracted

PETERMBALL Journal , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

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.