The Catch-up Post

My brain is full of much-ness today. As in there is much I want to blog about, but little time and space in which to achieve this, so things kind of bump up against each other and nothing gets written. As always, I blame the thesis – in some ways it feels like I’ve been talking about it for so long that the opportunity to talk about something else triggers this rush of “oh, and that…” (I shall stop that train of thought there, I think, lest I start rambling; rambling is the symptom of a brain full of much-ness).

Okay, lets focus on the news in short form:

• On the writing front, some good news – I sold a story, Clockwork, Patchwork and Raven, to Apex Online. This was the source of much huzzah around the writing the desk, as one might imagine.
• Also on the writing front – the Black Dragon, White Dragon anthology is available now. It’s one of the debut anthologies from Ricasso Press which has had a long and windy road to follow in order to reach publication (Ricasso were the source of my favorite acceptance letter ever, as I blogged about back when they first accepted The Dragonkeeper’s Wife for the anthology back in April of 2007). I’ve barely had time to flick through my copy, but it looks like fun.
• The workshop which changed my life as a writer, Clarion South, has had a run of bad luck this year (cancelled tutors, finding a new venue on short notice) and they’re in need of donations to help them continue running. I’ll probably do a longer post on this in the future, but until then I’ll link over to the donations page for those who are already willing to sling a few bucks their way.
• The ever-awesome Ben Francisco hit town, proving his status as a writer-geek of honor by spending much of his Brisbane vacation critting stories and putting together the a plan for finishing the piece we collaborated on back in Clarion two years ago.
• I also got the opportunity to go see Amanda-Fucking-Palmer on Sunday night – I may still be coming down from the experience. I see many bands, artists and writers who are feasibly awesome, but Amanda Palmer continues to be one of those artists who strikes me as being unfeasibly awesome and capable of inviting people in to what she’s doing as an artist (as evidenced by the fact that the show ended with her playing a ukulele and singing Creep, sans-microphone, while everyone in the audience sang along).