Courtesy of Holy Robot (whose work I found via PixelGirl), my new desktop:
(Click on the piccie to get the full impact. The website provides several resolutions.)
I must say, Nemesis looks quite fetching decked out in balancing panda.
Jun 102009
Jun 082009
Today, it being a blustery, sombre sort of day, I invaded the local cemetery, for I ain't afraid of no ghosts weeping angels. You know what this means, don't you? Oh yes. You guessed it. Cemetery photos!
I met a lass, not long ago, who had once worked at a cemetery taking photos of headstones &c, because apparently once the family stops caring for the grave, the caretakers are not allowed to halt the decay and all that history crumbles away into nothing. Which is the natural course of things, and part of what makes cemeteries a cool place to spend a rambling kind of hour.
Halfway through my walk (which didn't actually come close to circumnavigating the cemetery; I think I managed to see maybe a third of the grounds, at best), I came across a mausoleum set atop a hill. It had a roof of red-hued stained-glass scales, so that looking up was like looking through the heart of a flower, or the underside of a young, unscarred dragon.
I never did find the name of the lady buried there, but she was loved:
And she was … synchronous? Is that the word I'm looking for? Well, whatever else, she was young:
All I could make out of the fellow buried here was that he was the second son of someone or other. Not actually a dog, as I at first suspected, but I'm guessing he rather liked them.
Jun 072009
This week I discovered many things.
I discovered (yet again) that I have very little no capacity for alcohol. Shortly thereafter I discovered (yet again) that the curse of pathological honesty is only exacerbated by the presence of alcohol. Note to self: you don't have to answer any random question put to you.
I also discovered that the Option key on my keyboard lets me print funky characters like Ω and †, œ and ø without any complicated keystrokes at all. Win! (Not that I use the Greek alphabet overmuch, you understand, but it does come in handy. Or, you know, it might. Next time I need to talk about µtorrent, for example. Shut up. It could happen.)
Jun 062009
Have a copy of Shadow Queen you want signed?
Live in (or near) Newcastle?
If so, mark down Saturday 27 June 2009 in your calendar, as I'll be at Angus & Robertson Kotara from 11 am.
At this stage, I have no signings organised anywhere else, but if you don't live in Newcastle and you'd be interested in attending one, you should let me know, either through a comment here on the blog or by email.
Jun 022009
I am feeling somewhat serious today, and so I point you to Richard Flanagan's closing speech at the recent Sydney Writer's Festival:
At the moment, Australian writers and readers are being asked to take a fall in order that a few rich people get richer.
… This dullest and dreariest of phrases – territorial copyright – is the drab motley thrown over a measure which will do untold damage to Australian culture. I cannot begin to convey to you the destructive stupidity of what is being proposed, nor the intense sadness and great anger that so many Australian writers feel about this proposal.
…Writers and books that matter will become like an endangered species with no habitat left to support them. The fate of most of them in the large chain and discount mega store culture will be that of marsupials in new outer suburbs, dicing with death on freeways, not knowing until that short moment of blinding light dazzle that this is no longer their home.
I highly recommend reading the full text of the speech, but for the edification of those non-Australians who read this blog, there is a proposal afoot to remove Australia's territorial copyright laws, and allow the parallel importation of books. Proponents argue it will result in cheaper books for the public.
Now, I'm all for cheaper books,1 but the arguments for parallel importation are specious, as Richard Flanagan summarises (emphasis mine):
Of course, as the Coalition for Cheaper Books – or, as we might more accurately call it, the Coalition for Bigger Business – would point out, that's not the whole story.
This is.
What is being proposed doesn't exist in Europe or the USA. And even if US and British publishers are allowed to dump books on our market, Australian publishers will not be allowed to do the same in theirs.
In the one country in the world where the change was introduced, New Zealand, publishing has, according to the New Zealand Publishers Association, suffered, and books are now more expensive.
If it were a reciprocal arrangement — if Australian publishers were granted access to the North American buying public at the same time as the North American publishers are granted access to the Australian buying public, for example — then the story might be different. But as it stands, the current proposal isn't "opening the market": it's turning Australia into a giant remainders bin for foreign publishers.
I don't know about you, but I get plenty of foreign culture on my TV and movie screens and book shelves as it is. I don't want those to be my only options.
More detail can be found at the AusBooks site, including a video of Richard Flanagan's speech, for those who don't want to read a slab of text online.
- Let's just say I don't know any published writers who got into this gig for the money
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