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The latest Conflux programme is here. I need to give you a 'what places to avoid' guide, so I shall do that now. I won't tell you all the evening functions and workshops and panels I'll be attending, just the ones I'm involved in. I have to admit, that I'm really not certain you should skip stuff just because I'm involved. Alan Baxter's book, for instance, is worth reading and the launch worth attending, despite my involvement. And if you avoid me entirely, you avoid the chocolate I have with me, which would be a great sadness. And I've heard rumours of chocolate-related comestibles at my book launch.

If any of you are coming and haven't decided which workshop to attend, can I give Sean McMullen's a plug? I've never known him to be boring and he has stuff worth hearing on the writing front. I would go myself, but it's at the same time as my own workshop and giving a workshop on consipiracy design by leaving the participatnts wondering where the teacher has got to is not good. I have evil plans for this workshop. Oh, and chocolate. Sean is more interesting than me, so I need both.

Friday
3:30pm Workshop Gillian Polack - Researching And Writing Secret History - How to Convince People That Conspiracies and Other Hidden History is Real

Saturday
2:30pm Canberra Showcase Panel
Richard Harland (c), Special Guests: Jack Heath, Maxine McArthur, Tracey O'Hara, Simon Petrie, Gillian Polack
3:30pm Panel The Norma K Hemming Award
Sean McMullen, Gillian Polack, Bill Wright(c)
4pm Panel Sexuality in SF
Maxine McArthur, Sean McMullen, Gillian Polack, Bill Wright(c)
4:30pm Mass Book Signing
7pm BANQUET

Sunday
Noon Launch MageSign by Alan Baxter
2:30pm Masques promotion event
3:30pm Panel Mythology and Cultural Respect
Yaritji Green(c), Gillian Polack, Christian Tamblyn, Kylie Seluka
4:30pm ENEIT Press Launch
Life Through Cellophane (Gillian Polack) and In Bad Dreams 2 (edited Sharyn Lilley)

Monday
10:00am Panel Food Food Food
Jenny Blackford, Lewis Morley, Marilyn Pride, Gillian Polack, Anna Tambour(c)
2:00pm Panel Fictional History
Jack Dann, Richard Harland, Dave Luckett(c), Gillian Polack

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Let me be honest, I'm blogging right now because I will have to do serious work when I stop blogging. This post could get very long.

This was my first Day of Atonement since Les died. I had to modify the prayer for one's lost father to make everything plural: I cheated and said it in English. I could only find one Yarhzeit candle so Les and Dad had to share it. They wouldn't've minded. They got on just fine when they were both alive. I could say that I cried for both of them, but that would sound very maudlin and the thing about Yom Kippur is that one emerges from it very unmaudlin. I was trying to explain this to A (who is visiting this half of this week) and made a mush of it.

I also made a mush of the relationship between my two fathers. Les used to joke that he knew the family very well before he married into it, but that was because his uncle married into our family earlier. Dad and Les had known each other forever. My friend J, who visited last week, commented that she knew about Les before she met him, in fact. Dad used to joke about our Irish cousins to her. "The O'Bermans," he called them.

I was going to post something merry. Maybe talk about Dr Who, since that's what A and I chatted about till I noticed that she was falling asleep and sent her to bed so I could do some work. We both agree about crucial things, like the quality of David Tennant's eyes and Tom Baker's voice.

Or perhaps I could talk about fiction I'm writing, since that's what many people do with their blogs. Except that I'm at the stage where a fault has appeared in the plotlines and the action in the last part of the book is affected by the subsequent plotquake. Which means I'm going to call this novel 'California' in my mind. Or 'San Andreas'. Anyhow, plotquakes are fun for me, but not merry for anyone else.

I could tell everyone coming to Canberra this weekend that I have a separate bag of chocolate for each day, but I've had a lot of Conflux posts recently and it might send everyone else screaming.

I know. I'll tell you all about my new pictures. I have two portraits of myself for my Facebook page. It's because so many people have complained about my beautiful biscuit tin. They complain it doesn't look like me. "Unless you're a bat," my best friend told me. She was quite willing to believe I was a bat.

Anyhow, I have two beautiful new pictures, one in black and white (with stars) and the other in black and white with a blue sun. I still haven't scanned them, and I'll keep on mentioning them online until I have remembered to put them up. J's daughters did them in a pub in Collector. What I was doing with primary school age children in a pub in Collector was drinking pink lemonade and eating chips. After that, the kids adjourned outside to play a form of zombie hide and seek. They taught me the rules, so if you have a yearning to play zombie hide and seek, just ask.