Thursday Linkfest

The Cure

PETERMBALL Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption , ,

A friend of mine just posted this on facebook. Due to overwhelming nostalgia and flashbacks to teenage angst, I, of course, am immediately posting it here.

‘Cause, honestly, I don’t care how long it’s been since you last listened to the cure, it’s still too damn long.

And now I go back to the edits and line-proofs, in the hopes I get them done in time to not piss off editors.

Catch you on the morrow, peeps. Don’t let the Monday get you down.

Thursday Linkfest

PETERMBALL Smart Advice from Smart People , , , , , , ,

Another week where the list is far less complete than I’d like, but such is life these days…

  • Okay, did you know Angela Slatter has a blog now? No? Well, now you do. Do yourself a favour and go read it, for Angela is a phenomenal writer and a sayer of useful things – I recommend starting with her posts on dialogue or the Clarion South experience.
  • So Friday of last week I put forth some ideas about SF and Gender in response to debates that’ve raged across the Australian SF community of late. Most of the discussion seemed to occur over in the comments of my livejournal, but it also spawned a response from Ben Payne (which generates some interesting discussion on its own).
  • Scienceagogo on Biodeversity Regions as Hotspots for War (Courtesy of Chris Green)
  • Chris Green takes my standard screed on the awesomeness of being rejected and turns it into a yearly writing goal.
  • The Conjecture website has been updates after a long period of silence, suggesting that my time in Adelaide come June may consists of more than sitting around Jason’s house and figuring out how I’ll get myself a pie floater.
  • Nancy Cress on common writing mistakes.
  • Sean Williams is giving away free e-book copies of his fantasy novel, The Crooked Letter.
  • How to Write a Novel Synopsis in an Hour (Courtesy of Jason Fischer).

Thursday Linkfest

PETERMBALL Smart Advice from Smart People , , , , , , , , , ,

Over-tired, very busy, and generally lazy this week. This is not so much a weeks worth of interesting links (which I’ve started doing as I go along) as stuff I remembered with half-hearted accuracy sometime this morning.

  • Via the ever-entertaining villainous_mog – photographs of Japanese Factories at night (as VM puts it: they look straight out of Final Fantasy 7.)
  • Tansy Raynor Roberts on writing time, with much on the notion of draft-speed.
  • Clarion peep Ben Francisco has posted his latest article at Fantasy, grading last years big comic-book company crossovers. (In the interest of self-confession, I must admit that my primary response was “thank god I don’t read comics” anymore, even though that’s something of a misnomer – it was big crossovers that drove me towards the discreet stories of the graphic-novel format).
  • Speaking of Clarion Peeps, both Lyn Battersby and Daniel Braum have posted their thoughts on the 2007 experience at tutor Lee Battersby’s blog.
  • Kate Eltham has two posts full of notes about Building Online Communities from the Tools of Change for Publishing conference in New York. If you’re a writer and you’re not reading Kate’s blog, you really should – it’s chock-full of stuff about the relationship between writers, the internet, and emerging technologies.
  • This week’s mind-meld over at SF Signal talks about the Hardest Part of Being a Writer
  • A few weeks back I loaned my friend Kathleen a copy of Space Train (aka the actual worst SF novel, rather than the so-bad-it’s-amusing worst SF novel ever). Like many people who have heard me hold forth on the horrors of Terence Haile’s story of sabotage, misogyny and class warfare (with bonus space crabs) she remained unconvinced that it was as bad as I claimed – behold her capitulation, in which she shares the pain (with bonus snark)… For those of you intrigued by all this, bear in mind that I’ve already made this book sound better than it is.
  • Clarion peep (and owner of the most awesome boots in existence) Chris Green shares his own list of links and bookmarks. I’ll just send you to his blog rather than posting them all here.