In my previous post I didn't mean to make a vague comment about a colourless day. If I had intended to do that I could have posted a picture of a cloud and said "Day was like being in the middle of this."
What I had intended to do was wax excited about the ACT literary festival. I and other Canberra speculative fiction writers are on a panel at 3.15 pm on the Saturday (National Library - we need you to cheer us on!) and then I am on duty selling CSFG books at the Romance Gauntlet (cost $8, National Museum Friends Room - sometime in the evening). I ought to be all kinds of excited, since this is the first non-speculative fiction literary festival where my name is really and truly on the program. Instead, there was a confusion over my book for the literary festival bit (the National Library Shop didn't think to order from Ingrams, and Illuminations was published in the US, so getting together copies was a pain). Anyhow, I have done what I can, and if I have an early night reading my new books, maybe I can spend tomorrow being excited.
The panel is cool. Trevor Stafford is chairing it, and it consists of Maxine McArthur (Time Future, Time Past, Less than Human), Peter Raftos (The Stone Ship), Andrew Sullivan (A Sunburnt Country) and myself.
The Romance Gauntlet will be a hoot. It is a read-off of erotic writing, using an Australian Idol type panel. Romance Writers vs the Canberra Speculative Fiction Guild. And you have *no* idea how relieved I am that my presence on the panel meant I didn't have to read for the evening. Last year I read and even won the prize for most subtle suggestive scene. It was subtle and suggestive because there was no sex in it at all. None. Nada. Zilch. Can't pull that trick two years running, so I am rather relieved I don't have to try.
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