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Mmm, BBQ

PETERMBALL Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption , , , , , , ,

S0 yesterday was pretty good day.

There was a delayed birthday dinner with the family, whereupon we set out for The Smoke in New Farm and ate our own bodyweight in American-style BBQ, then we set out to see Wil Anderson at the Brisbane Comedy Festival, and then because I was full of food and happy I stayed up to listen to the latest Galactic Suburbia podcast instead of going to sleep.

Somewhere in there the home internet was fixed, so I rejoined the online world, and I wrote some things. About 1 o’clock I went to bed and actually slept for five hours, which is something I rarely do since starting the dayjob and discovered that being employed is actually far more stressful and soul-destroying than being unemployed (who knew?).

So yesterday was a pretty good day, against all expectations, and tonight I make chili in the hopes that it’ll redeem today in much the same way.

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The Aurealis Awards short-lists came out yesterday, which includes all sorts of awesome news such as: Jason Fischer making the final list of the Best Horror Novel for Gravesend (and really, it’s about time the Fisch made an Aurealis Shortlist); four nominations for the inimitable Angela Slatter (both her collections were shortlisted, as was the story Sister, Sister and her collaboration with LL Hannett, The February Dragon ); Trent Jamieson making the shortlist with Death Most Definite; Dirk Flinthart making the list  YA Short Story; all sorts of love for Twelfth Planet Press up and down the shortlist.

I’m inevitably forgetting to congratulate *someone* in the list above, for which I apologise and offer a blanket congratulations go out to everyone. Full details of the list can be found over at the Aurealis Awards website.

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I read Ian McEwen’s Solar over the weekend, which quickly became one of those books that I’m ish-ish about. It was my first McEwen book and I found myself intrigued by the idea of the book after it was featured on First Tuesday Book Club last year, and while it’s got some beautiful writing and characterization it left me feeling utterly unsatisfied at the end.

Basically it’s one of those comic tragedies where you follow the life of an utterly appalling human being who’s rarely punished for their follies until the end, only when it comes the tragedy is so utterly weak that I found myself shrugging and thinking “really? That’s it?”

I mean, I would have been more satisfied if he’d gotten away with everything, which isn’t really really the kind of thing tragedy should strive for. Still, it’s an interesting read, and the narrative POV  is so hands-off and telling-oriented that I’m fascinated by the fact that it seems to work.

It just doesn’t inspire me to read more McEwen, which seems a shame.

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I keep forgetting to mention this and it should probably be something that gets a blog post of its own, but the latest installment of Flotsam is out over at the Edge of Propinquity website.

The Great Bookshelf Reorganising of 2011

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Reorganised Bookshelf

On Saturday night, around 4 am, I started reorganising bookshelves. It seemed like the thing to do, since I’d been studiously not-sleeping for five hours after going to bed.

Bookcases are one of the places where mess accumulates in my flat, largely because there’s so many of the damn things and I’ve developed a bad habit of taking things down, reading a couple of paragraphs, then putting them back somewhere else. What starts as a workable system quickly devolves over time, and every couple of years I have to start from scratch and reorganize the entire system.

The whole process tends to start around 4 AM, ’cause insomnia is my response to doing to much and thinking too much and generally feeling like things are out of control. Reordering shelves is my way of figuring out what is and isn’t important in my life, and everything goes on from there. It’s a mental reset, fighting back against my natural tendency towards entropy.

So far I’ve got two shelves down. There are many, many more to go.

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I mention this primarily because my friend Alan, and possibly my dad, were interested in knowing when the issue of Weird Tales with my story in it was available. And it now seems as though Weird Tales #357 is out in the world, and when all your friends are Lovecraft geeks this is about as cool as it gets.

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This has been doing the rounds of twitter and facebook recently, but for those behind the curve: a guy tries to sell “a story to topple Star Wars and Harry Potter” on ebay with a starting bid of $3,000,000.

There’s also a pretty good take-down of his sales pitch over at Bleeding Cool, but essentially what’s going on  is a new iteration of an old conversation that goes something along the lines of “oh, wow, you’re a writer? I’ve got a great idea, let me sell it to you and we can split the money it earns once you’ve written it.”

For those of you out there with a great idea: please don’t do this. It irritates writers and perpetuates the myth that ideas are somehow all it takes, rather than work and persistence and the occasional stroke of luck

Most writers will reply with something along the lines of “ah-huh, great, but I’m a little busy right now,” after which the writer walks away and mock you with their writer-friends, who understand that ideas are the cheap part of the equation and worth very little until someone builds a book/movie around them.

When you try to sell your idea on ebay for large sums of money, it just means you’ll be mocked in public. The internets are like that, sometimes. So are writers, really. I suspect we’re subconsciously bitter about the fact that our career is so frequently undervalued, both socially and monetarily, that the three million asking price is like a red cape to a bull.

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I tweeted this a little earlier this morning, largely ’cause I suspect there’s more gamers following my twitter/facebook feeds than there are following this blog, but just in case I’m wrong: RPGnow is raising funds for the NZ Earthquake victims. Folks who donate $20 get a bundle of over $320 RPG/gaming  ebooks donated by gaming publishers.

This is, as they say, a good cause worth supporting and the RPG ebook community has been very successful with such things in the past (and a tip of the hat to Melinda, who comments here occasionally, for giving me the heads up).

Saturday Morning

PETERMBALL Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption , , , ,

Desk View: Coffee, Printer, Keyboard, and Mithrangorfaniel

It’s Saturday morning and I’m drinking instant coffee. Maccona Classic Dark Roast with milk and one sugar, for those who might be interested, although I have no earthly idea why you would be. In an hour or so I’m going to ignore the rest of the internet and start talking to the scattered members of my online crit group, who conveniently double as a group of good and articulate friends, so there’s still good reason to skype on the dates when we’re meant to be critting and no-one actually submitted things.

This, I suspect, is as close to being one of the hidden secrets of writing as I can think of – find people you enjoy talking too who happen to be writers, then talk to them as often as you can. Ideas will form, ambitions will solidify, and the day-to-day despair of being underpaid and frustrated by the blank page will gradually fall by the wayside. I remember this far less often than I should.

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The Friday issue of Daily Science Fiction containing my story appeared in my inbox overnight, delayed until Saturday morning by the magic of time zones. The online version isn’t up yet, but I’ll post a link when it is (I think the delay is about a week, but I subscribed to get the stories via email, so I’m not entirely sure).

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I’ve been up since five AM for reasons unfathomable to me, and spent most of that time re-reading parts of books I adore, because five AM on a Saturday is a good time to re-read and adore things all over again. The world wants you to sleep in on weekends, so the five AM start is like stealing time that doesn’t belong to you, and re-reading parts of books is the kind of sacrilegious activity that divorces language from the context of narrative and gives you the opportunity to appreciate things anew. Language as an art gallery, where you’re encouraged to examine the individual pieces of the whole.

It reminds you of things that have dropped from view.

I’d forgotten, for example, much of the raw power in Fitzgerald’s introduction of Tom Buchanan. I remember the tag-line – the final image of the body capable of great leverage – because it’s one of the great character descriptions that appear in modern literature. It’s the thing that sticks in my memory because that’s what it’s meant to do, but the set-up that makes that one line it’s impact? Forgotten. Lost. Until I sit down and re-read, and am reminded of how carefully that line is built up.

He had changed since his New Haven years. Now he was a sturdy straw-haired man of thirty with a rather hard mouth and a supercilious manner. Two shining arrogant eyes had established dominance over his face and give him the appearance of always leaning aggressively forward. Not even the effeminate swank of his riding clothes could hide the enormous power of that body – he seemed to fill those glistening boots until he strained the top lacing, and you could see the great pack of muscle shifting when his shoulder moved under his thin coat. It was a body capable of enormous leverage – a cruel body. (The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald)

Too many people hate the Great Gatsby because it’s one of the books they were forced to read at school, because they were told to ask more of their fiction. I don’t begrudge them that, asking more of your fiction is a choice every reader should make on their own and there’s nothing wrong with saying ‘entertain me’ if it’s that’s the choice they’re making.

But Fitzgerald’s book deserves so much better. It deserves to be read by people who will love it.

Preferably in parts, on Saturday mornings, long after they’ve read the whole