Archive for the ‘Misc’ Category

Today is the first day of the rest of your life

Nov 21st, 11 / Comments Off

Today, for the first time in far too long, I actually felt like a normal and productive human being.  Well, normal and productive for my own version of both ;)

Which translated to: the house got cleaned, the kidlet got played with (though I didn’t do the majority of that today).  And I wrote, to the tune of 1,700 words, and it felt like good writing – for the first time in far too long I found the hole in the page.  I managed some reading, too, which is good, since I have a stack of Aurealis reading to do.  And I even got a short walk in – just in time for the weather to start warming up, at which time I can no longer tolerate walks.  Fneh.

It felt damn good to write.  Hopefully I can power through this draft now.

Pure beauty

Nov 20th, 11 / Comments Off

Earth | Time Lapse View from Space, Fly Over | NASA, ISS from Michael König on Vimeo.

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And back to it

Nov 7th, 11 / Comments Off

Today, for the first time in a long time, I wrote.  1,200 words, and they were easy and they are good.  And lo, I am happy.

I’ve lost pretty much a solid month to this awful flu, and the fatigue aftermath.  Last week, the flu itself was mostly passed, but I was hit with bone-crushing fatigue.  Which meant that pretty much everything stopped.  On the worst days, I couldn’t read or focus on anything for more than five minutes.  True lost days.

Somewhere in there, ideas for Bone Girls started to come together.  I’m not certain of the story, but the general shape of its protagonist is starting to emerge.  Ideally, I’d like to have an outline put together by the time I finish this draft of Never, so I can go onto working on the first draft.  Yes, I appear to have become an outline writer.

We finally managed writer’s group this weekend (it had been delayed twice because I had been sick).  It was still hard, because I was one with the fatigue and fever (and spent part of the evening lying on the floor because of it).  I didn’t get much actual writing done, but just being with the other writers is something that feed my soul.  I have wanted a good writing group for so long, and I feel so damn blessed to know these people.  We’re all very different writers with different methods and inspiration, but they all feed me, and they’re all so damn talented with what they do.

Today I am tired, but it’s mostly lack-of-sleep-tired, not bone-crushing fatigue (and yes, they are two different things, and anyone who’s dealt with a fatiguing illness will know the difference).  Despite the sleepiness, I managed to clean the house, deal with laundry (and jag getting it all dry around rain), cuddle the kidlet a lot, nap while he did and begin the process of catching up on everything that I’ve put off for the last month.  I have a lot of Aurealis reading to do, for one thing, which means that a few other things (like my Her Worlds and Words project) are going to get put on the backburner for a while.

It is good to be writing again, oh yes.

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Books read, October 2011

Nov 1st, 11 / Comments Off

Fiction

Dead in the Family - Charlaine Harris

Dead Reckoning - Charlaine Harris

Farthing - Jo Walton*

Tooth and Claw - Jo Walton*

Bluegrass Symphony - Lisa L. Hannett*

Everyone’s Just So So Special - Robert Shearman*

Death Most Definite - Trent Jamieson*

Managing Death - Trent Jamieson*

The Business of Death - Trent Jamieson*

Roil - Trent Jamieson

Debris - Jo Anderton*

Little, Big - John Crowley*

Room - Emma Donaghue*

The Hours - Michael Cunningham*

That Blackfella Bloodsucka Dance! - Bruno D. Starrs

The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood*

 

Non-fiction

Lost and Found - Geneen Roth

James Tiptree Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon - Julie Phillips*

The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness - Ellyn R. Saks*

And so, as the veils grow thin

Oct 31st, 11 / Comments Off

Tonight is Beltaine Eve in the Southern Hemisphere, a time when the veils between the worlds grow thinner.

It feels somewhat appropriate that I returned to work today after struggling with a horrible flu for the past few weeks.  As I type this, I’m still dealing with a fairly horrid sinus headache, which thankfully eased enough today for me to get some work done.

And so, back to this draft of Never.  The words came slowly at first, and then I found myself sinking into the page.  I finished the scene I was working on, and ended up with 1,500 words that I was happy with.

There was also reading – I finished up a reread of The Handmaid’s Tale.  And picked up Generation X, to prepare for the next episode of The Writer and the Critic.  I only managed a couple of pages before the kidlet woke up from his nap and demanded attention.

I am way, way behind on my podcasts, thanks to my habit of listening to them while I walk (and having not gone for a walk while sick).  Finally got to start the process of catching up today with the latest Galactic Suburbia.  And I didn’t come home with more books that I need to read, no.  Well, maybe ;)

Ladies and gentlemen we are floating in space

Oct 27th, 11 / Comments Off

I am not writing again today.

Tomorrow is a public holiday, and dammit, I am going to take the holiday.  So it will be Monday until I sit down and commit words to virtual paper again.

However.  I may not be writing, but the men in the basement are still working.  Over the blurred days of the past weeks, a new story has been surfacing.  This is something that has been knocking around in my head for some time, a novel with the tentative title of The Bone Girls.  It is demanding some kind of life, and so I have decided that I will begin working on its outline while I’m working on the second draft of Never.

Multitasking while writing hasn’t been something that I’ve done successfully before, but hell, if I want a career out of this, it’s going to be something I’m going to have to learn.

We are all made of stories

Oct 26th, 11 / Comments Off

According to my calendar, I haven’t written properly in almost a fortnight.  Sickness meant that I didn’t have the focus, and depression added to the weight pulling me away from the page.  Today, I feel well enough (with the addition of medication), but a clingy kidlet kept me away from the computer instead.

It feels strange.  To not be writing, though I have been reading.  To be haunted by those days as they pass.  Haunted by all the shoulds: I should be further along in my career, I should be better/stronger/more than I am right now.

Meandering through my books brought me to the biography of Alice Sheldon/James Tiptree Jr, purchased a while ago and languishing unread.  I have been enthralled by her, absolutely fascinated by what made her.  She didn’t start writing seriously until she was much older than I am now, and look at what she produced.  There is still time.

Here is still time.

And the stories, they will come.

Yesterday afternoon, in a break between the unseasonable rain, I walked the land.  I hadn’t been out walking for too long, thanks to sickness, and I’d almost forgotten how much it makes me whole.  I follow a druidic path, and just being out beneath the sky and the trees, the earth beneath my feet feeds everything that makes me.

There are stories in the land, if you only take the time to see them.

Aided by my trusty Atrix, I captured some of them.

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In which this flu kicks my ass once again

Oct 21st, 11 / Comments Off

Woke up this morning feeling absolutely horrendous.  Exhausted, achy, stuffed up and with a sore throat that came and went.  This flu just keeps on giving, dammit.

There was no writing yesterday, and there will be no writing today.  I don’t think there will much of anything today, apart from dealing with laundry.

Annoyingly, I actually have a fairly busy weekend ahead.  I was looking forward to it earlier in the week, when I was feeling better.  Hopefully taking it easy today will mean that my immune system will kick into gear and kill this damn flu.

Slipping, sliding

Oct 19th, 11 / Comments Off

I believe I forgot to post yesterday.  Things have fallen slightly out of routine these past few weeks as the flu has raged through this household.  The kidlet is still sickish and has been sleeping a lot – today was the first day he was back to his regular nap of 1.5-2 hours (as opposed to 3-4 hours), though he clearly needed more sleep than that and was a grump until he got to go back to bed.

A couple of decent writing days – I made 2,000 words yesterday, though I just scraped 1,000 today.  And I’m going to be playing with those thousand words again tomorrow, I think, since the two scenes don’t flow well as is and need to be rewritten into a single scene.

I’m still coughing a lot (and probably will be for some time, I think), but it’s so damn nice to be feeling somewhat well again.  It’s going to take me a bit of time to get back to exercising properly (a short walk today left me coughing to a ridiculous level, so much that the pressure from it was giving me a headache), but so long as I can write, I feel sane.  I’m newly enthusiastic about the writing, too, which is kind of awesome.

Reading: I gulped down Jon Armstrong’s Yarn in a couple of days.  Which was…quite extraordinary.  I’m not entirely sure if I’m going to pick up a copy of Grey, written in the same world.  Probably, at some stage when I don’t have hundreds of books waiting to be read.  I’ve moved onto Little, Big, which has been on my to-read pile for a shamefully long time, inspired to read it after listening to Cat Valente squee about it on the latest SF Squeecast.

Not a review: Debris by Jo Anderton

Oct 18th, 11 / 1 Comment

 

In a far future where technology is all but indistinguishable from magic, Tanyana is one of the elite.

 

She can control pions, the building blocks of matter, shaping them into new forms using ritual gestures and techniques. The rewards are great, and she is one of most highly regarded people in the city. But that was before the “accident”.

 

Stripped of her powers, bound inside a bizarre powersuit, she finds herself cast down to the very lowest level of society. Powerless, penniless and scarred, Tanyana must adjust to a new life collecting “debris”, the stuff left behind by pions. But as she tries to find who has done all of this to her, she also starts to realize that debris is more important than anyone could guess.

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A confession: I bought this book in part because of the cover.  And because from what I’ve seen from following Jo Anderton online and on Twitter, she seems like an incredibly nice person.  What I didn’t know was that she is also incredibly talented.  And that behind the sexy cover lurks an amazing story.

I am, quite honestly, burned out on a lot of fiction.  Tired of the same old same old, tired of the same plots, the same characters, the same tropes.  I have tended to seek out beautifully written books based in the real world of late.  And I think Debris has shown me that fantasy (0r is it sf? is it steampunk?  all I know is that it’s amazing) can be just as beautiful and entrancing.

I was sucked into the world from the first page.  Original magic/technology and gorgeous imagery combine into a world that feels real.  So much so that every time I put the book down, I found myself looking for pions in the real world.  And I adore Tanyana as a character – and have the feeling that this book only just scrapes the surface of who she is.

I am somewhat sad that this is the first book of a series, but I am glad, because it means that there’s more of this world and Tanyana to come.

Go and buy it.  Now.

 

 

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