Aug 17

Character guilt

This draft is happening a lot slower than I wanted it to happen, but progress is still being made. In fact, today I start the first of two ‘big events’ at the end. If I had a graph of this story — and no, I don’t have one. That can wait for the next draft 😉 — this is one of the large peaks all the other little peaks have been building up to. Or, at least, that’s what I hope is happening. I’ll probably find a lot of troughs in the next reading. But that’s what revision is for, right?

Anyhoo, the closer we get to this peak, the slower progress is becoming. And this is due to character guilt.

Bad things happen on this peak. Necessary things, yes, but bad. And they happen to characters I happen to like quite a bit. So I’m feeling guilty. I know I will find the end of this scene very emotional (don’t look at me like that! I’m not strange!).

Hence the slow down. Today, however, I have to take the plunge. I have to start down a dark road knowing full well what happens on the other side. This is, for me at least, the good and the bad about first drafts. Because I’m trying just to get the story down, to let the writing do what it wants and fix it all up later, I am so much more involved. I come out of my writing sessions exhausted, exhilarated, and emotional.

Yeah, I know. These people aren’t real. They’re only in my head. But I feel for them, I feel with them. And this is going to hurt.

Aug 15

Oops! Behind again

Oh dear, I’m rather behind on my blogging. I haven’t even mentioned yet that my short story Little Ghost Boy will be appearing in Midnight Echo 3!

This story started writing its strange little self while I was taking a walk around Coogee and Gordon’s Bay during my lunch break — yes, I work that close to the beach (jealous?). It probably says something about my mind that on a beautiful day with the sun sparkling on the water, people surfing and swimming and fishing, I come up with a story like this one.

Guess you’ll just have to wait until ME3 comes out to see what I mean.

*evil laugh*

Aug 14

The Orbiteers and world domination

I knew these people would take over the world!

HUGE congrats going out to two of my fellow Orbiteers.

Luke Keioskie who, aside from having the greatest website ever, has just published his novel Dead America with Severed Press. It’s a zombie book people, it’s available right now… what more do I have to say?

And Graham Storrs‘ novel TimeSplash is not only being published by Lyrical Press but it’s coming out as an ebook! That’s very Twenty-First Century. But Graham, how do I get you to sign it?

It just feels great to see two wonderfully talented people who I know have worked so hard achieve such success.

Aug 01

Gardening post

The wonderful Rabia Gale has been pestering harassing gently reminding me to post some more gardening photos. So here we are 🙂

The garden is coming along. It’s slowed down by my lack of money and dedicated gardening time, but it has turned out to be a wonderful hobby, getting me out into the sunshine, fresh air, and away from the desk. I’ve even grown and eaten my own broccoli, radishes and coriander (so far).

The plants on the balcony upstairs are going great guns. We have lettuce and pak choy:

Rocket and tomatoes:

And flowers, flowers everywhere! So delicate — and unfortunately hard to do justice in a photo with this camera:

Downstairs I set up two no-dig gardens for veggies. So far they haven’t achieved very much, except a LOT of pea plants — the joy of organic pea straw. But here you can see snow peas in amidst all the straw. They seem to be doing well, despite being stepped on, dug up and chewed by the dog.

And in a pot on the patio downstairs: more veggies, more flowers, oh my!

And my ever-present helper 🙂

So there we go. The garden as it currently stands.

I find myself quite in awe of seeds. The little dry things — some of them so tiny you can hardly see them — become beautiful green plants which grow and grow, and create flowers and food! Seeds are amazing. That is all.

Jul 26

PIR

I have had a rather bitter post about the Productivity Commission and their recommendation to remove restrictions on the parallel importation of books in Australia sitting in my drafts folder for a while now. Today I deleted it. Because we don’t need bitterness — even if we may feel it — at the moment. We need to rally. We need to demonstrate to our government why accepting this recommendation it is not in Australia’s best interest. You might note I didn’t say ‘Australian authors’ or ‘publishers’ or even ‘independent bookstores’. Allowing the parallel importation of books would be devastating not only for the writing, publishing, and printing industries, and everyone associated with them — agents, booksellers, illustrators, the list indeed goes on — but for the country as a whole. It will be devastating for the reading public, for our culture, and for our identity.

Lots of people have said this better than me. This is but a sample.

You can join the fight here.