it's not like that's what the publisher wants to know or anything

Forgive me, my lovely internets, for spending so long away from you! (And, um, promise you'll forgive me for only briefly checking in before I dash away again?)

I did however find one of the world's better 'No Entry' signs while I was away, which I offer for your amusement:

Mostly lately I've been working, when I could snatch a moment to myself, on a synopsis for the faerie novel. Given I haven't finished the novel, and don't plan my novels in advance, writing a synopsis at this point in my process is … not coming easily, to say the least.

I'm finding it surprisingly draining. The story always feels forced, when I need to figure things out before the characters actually experience it, and I never trust that I've got it right. But after much grinding of teeth (quite literally — all this novel-plotting is making me grind my teeth while I sleep) I think I've figured out the important plot points.

Well, everything except the, er, climax.

Yanno, no biggie.

6 November 2010 @ 22:46 | 2 Comments

it's not unlike organising your own public flogging

In pondering the finer details of the Shadow Bound launch, there were some ideas that seemed OMG genius! on the face of it but which … didn't quite work out according to plan. In the interests of entertaining you, I thought I might share a couple of them with you.

One was that, in an attempt to decorate the room, I thought I might draw some golem characters. Good idea, no? Clay plays a pretty key role in Shadow Queen, after all, and there are even more golems in Shadow Bound, and I could draw a range of comic, cute and choleric golem faces to leer down at us from the walls.

And then I remembered … I can't really draw.

No, really. I'm not being humble. I have some rudimentary, grade-school skill, but it's simply not up to anything more than entertaining my brain during office meetings. My first attempt at drawing Clay's face made him, um, a girl. Oops? My second and third and fourth attempts did not produce any great leaps of artistic progress. If I had a good few years of daily practice between now and the book launch, I might have some hope of delivering hand-drawn golems for your entertainment, but as it is … yeah. Not so much.

So instead I'll be relying on the redoubtable Les Petersen's book covers to prettify the room. You can all thank me later.

The other idea — which would totally be genius, if we had the time to make it work, and if the Melbourne Convention Centre wasn't imposing a ban on the bringing-in of food they didn't supply, was to bake an enormous golem 'biscuit'.

This story I'll relate to you as it was related to me: in text message form. With photos.

Adorable. Yet horrific.

He fell over in the heat. He's weeping butter. This is…not really working.

I have no way of knowing if his bowels are cooked. This operation? Total buttergeddon.

So sadly there won't be an enormous golem 'biscuit' which I can use to inflict death-by-butter on you all :(

26 August 2010 @ 21:00 | 5 Comments

ebooks and excerpts, oh my

FIRST

You do all realise there will be random and intermittent Mongolia stories for some time to come, right? Never fear, they won't be your typical I did such and such, saw such and such, and am now cramming seven gazillion photos and details into one drawn out day type posts, mainly because I'll bore myself shitless if I even so much as tried that.

However, tonight I have other news, writing-ish news, which I should impart first. This brings me to:

THIRDLY

The PodCastle contract for "The Wages of Salt" has been signed and returned. I'll let you know the date it's podcast when I know it. I must admit, this being the first audio version of one of my stories, I'm eager to hear it read aloud.

In other short fiction news, ASIM #45 didn't go live while I was away, as far as I can see. In case you were trying to keep an eye out. Again, more when I know it.

SIXTH AND LASTLY

Here's something I didn't know before now, but might come in handy for you: there's an ebook version of Shadow Queen available!

Apologies for not alerting you all to this sooner, but I only found out because I had need to visit the A&U website today and noticed a new link.

So I guess that means you international types now have an easier way of accessing the book than wrangling with postage rates.

AND, TO CONCLUDE…

For all of you eagerly waiting to find out how Matilde's story ends, courtesy of the good folks at A&U you can now read the first two chapters of Shadow Bound online (or download a PDF for reading later).

The hardcopy version should start appearing on shelves in bricks and mortar stores any time from now on, so get out there and get hunting!

24 June 2010 @ 21:01 |

but two miles more and then we rest!

News from the powers that be at Allen & Unwin is that the publication date of Pledged, aka Matilde #2, aka the sequel to Shadow Queen, aka That Book I Have Been Studiously Pretending Does Not Exist, will now be May 2010, not March 2010.

There's a few reasons for the change in schedule, not least of which is that my editor would like to edit the book herself rather than delegate. Truthfully, I'm happy about the change.

Yes, I know it means the book is coming out later, and you all have to wait just that bit longer to find out what happens to Matilde. I'm sorry!

But it will be worth the wait. It was Louise's hard and patient work that quashed all my writer's tics in Shadow Queen, and made my incoherent ramblings look like a narrative, and I'd love her deft touch to carry through to the sequel. I'd rather the book be as strong as I and my editors can make it, and giving the edits the time and attention they need is part of that process.

So May 2010 it is!

In the meantime, I promise to entertain you with stories of how the edits are driving me mad ;-)

21 September 2009 @ 20:21 | 2 Comments

just your typical glamorous day, really

All week I was promised: 20°C on Saturday. And now Saturday is here, and I'm sitting on the couch wearing my fingerless gloves and wrapped in a throw rug, because it is very clearly NOT 20°C. No doubt when I leave the house this afternoon, the wind will sweep itself and all the clouds away to the south and Melbourne will start to bake and I, I will be overdressed and thus I will suffer. This is the natural way of things.

So far this morning, I have managed to wake up at 6:39 (and this is despite not getting to sleep until about 02:30 and where can I lodge a complaint about my bio-rhythms, anyway?) and pick my way through maybe half of the copyedits on "Shaping Lily". Suffice to say I've had better days as far as focus is concerned. Ah well.

Now I think it's time for breakfast.

Before I dive back into wrangling that effing car-crash of a narrative the faerie novel.

ETA: Since the A-format of Shadow Queen should be hitting bookshelves soon, it occurs to me now would be a good time to remind visitors to the blog that you can read the first chapter online for free.

15 August 2009 @ 12:15 |

mark your calendars

A quick reminder for those of you in or near Newcastle this Saturday (since I'll be jumping a plane tomorrow morning and may forget to blog tomorrow) that I'm doing a signing at the Angus & Robertson at Westfield Kotara, from 11am.

Come and entertain me!

25 June 2009 @ 21:15 |

i have been team-built

For those of you waiting for its arrival: I haven't seen a copy myself yet, but it looks like Postscripts #18 has been released into the wild.

This is the issue which features my story, "The Wages of Salt", and google alerts tells me it's made at least one good impression so far.

Now, being a writer, and therefore of delicate emotional constitution, this pleases me immensely. But I'm especially glad to see this story available for general purchase, because it's one of my favourites. Part of that is because, of everything I've written, "The Wages of Salt" is the story which best survived the translation from my head to the written word; it's always a tricky process, and every story takes a few wounds in the process of being pinned to the page. Also, partly it's because I simply adore the world I created in that story, and I'm keen to go back and write more in that same world. I have a few snippets of ideas, waiting for time and inspiration and a solid plot.

melbournebotanicgardens02

I took this photo yesterday morning, as I wandered through the Royal Botanic Gardens on my way to work. (In fact, I took quite a lot of photos. I would have taken more, but it was 8 o'clock in the morning and only 6°C: my fingers froze.) I liked the image of a circle of chairs gathered beneath a circle of trees, all empty. I wonder what meetings go on there? (Whatever they are, I bet the ones I'm imagining are far more interesting than the reality.)

28 May 2009 @ 19:19 |

i was a quick wet boy diving too deep for coins

Today's panel turned out rather well, I think. My criteria for judging this was that I didn't keel over dead at any point — always a positive. Additionally, I didn't sit up there unable to talk or think of anything to say, and nor did I sound like a total blithering idiot when I did talk.

I can't say I sounded at all knowledgeable, particularly in comparison to Ian Irvine and Richard Harland, with whom I was sharing the panel and who both know more about the publishing industry in their sleep than I could ever hope to master even if I never slept again. Still, I take my miracles where I can find them, these days, and today's miracle (apart from surviving a public appearance intact) was the arrival of the taxi to get me to the airport. Things looked very dicey for a while there, especially when no less than two cab companies vehemently tried to convince me I was making up the address, that no such place as the NSW Writers' Centre exists, ever existed, or will ever exist. (Clearly, taxi companies have a supply of melange at their disposal, which they are just as clearly not sharing with their drivers, who never seem to know the way anywhere. Or maybe that's just my luck.)

Most of the audience were writers of one sort or another, and it was a very strange experience to be sitting on the panel instead of sitting in their midst — to be answering the question of how to land a publishing contract instead of asking it. It was utterly surreal to be one of the people being asked for advice on the craft of writing. It's not all that long ago I was sitting in Brisbane, attending Clarion, scribbling down every snippet of wisdom that penetrated the fog of my sleep-deprived brain. And yet today complete strangers asked me to sign a copy of my book for them. Do they not know I know nothing?

To anyone who does wander across my website after hearing me talk today about the Friday Pitch, you can find the details at Allen & Unwin — Friday Pitch. Good luck!

Flightless Bird, American Mouth (Iron & Wine — The Shepherd's Dog)

5 April 2009 @ 22:43 | 4 Comments

it never rains but it pours

The signing sheets for Postscripts #18 have come and gone on their merry way and I can say this with certainty: I have no signature. Truly, every single one of those sheets is unique.

I am currently sitting in my car, which is at the moment a very expensive sculpture, on account of the battery going to sleep sometime in the past two weeks and now declining to emerge from its coma. Given that I need the car today in order to find a place to live, my previous plans having exploded in rather spectacular and last-minute fashion, I am, needless to say, a little peeved with life right about now. For values of a little roughly approximate to I think the world can just go ahead and burn, what do I care any more?

So, my apologies, but sporadic and unfocussed (and haphazardly abandoned) is going to be a feature of this site until life JUST SETTLES DOWN, DAMMIT.

In the meantime, have a snippet of awesome to entertain you: Predator X (link courtesy of splinister)

PS: Comments are not turned off, but please be aware that I may be a little distracted and unable to get around to answering any of them for a bit.

21 March 2009 @ 11:42 |

i'm just no good at blurbs

Today, I am full of requests for blurbs and biographies.

Note to self: when you write a story, write a blurb then and there. You'll need it later.

Pledged has been read through (and hopefully all those embarrassing typos caught and corrected) and emailed to my agent and editor, which means it's off my desk for the immediate future. There was a lot of wonky formatting this time around, courtesy of the switch to mac (Word on the mac seems determined to ignore my underlining, bastard program). Of course, I forgot to send along a blurb, so had to spend this morning on that.

Also, news from PS Publishing that Issue #18 is ready for design, which means I need to provide a blurb and bio for them. It looks like they'll be publishing a signed edition as well, which should prove interesting, as the signing sheets are set to arrive…right in the middle of my interstate move. Oh yeah, that'll be fun.

4 February 2009 @ 10:45 | 4 Comments
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