time to look at my website

One of the thing I intend to do later in the week (time permitting) is to clean up my website a little. My work experience student gave me a template for tidying, and it's about time I acted on it. This isn't a full redesign, just a tidying and maybe updating content. I know I need to start from scratch and make it modern and etc, but I don't have time. I can, however, make it significantly better.

Is there anything you'ld like to see on the website? Would you like more FAQishness - and, if so, what sort of questions do you want answered? Would you like more bio? More about specific books? Are there any favourite articles you have that need links?

All thoughts gratefully received!

Even Baggage has baggage: Monica Carroll on "The fish GP rejects."

Anthologies contain stories: they also travel their own storyline as they are created. Working on an anthology feels a bit like living a novel where a play is being put on and all the characters are important and will come together on the right way, at the right time and produce something quite magic. Living through that story is endlessly fascinating.

Monica's section of our storyline was of special interest. I learned a lot about the intersection of poetry and tale through working with her. Every time a piece Monica gave me wasn't quite there, we talked about how to best walk that tightrope between image and story. I'll let Monica tell you the rest.


The fish GP rejects

Sometimes, having a story rejected can be the nicest experience. Such was the case with my numerous attempts at migration fiction.

I came to one story with a question, a contrast. What if a whole society, newly landed, brought migratory values of peace and respect instead of discovery and triumph? The result was an abstract story about a matriarchal culture with environment-derived rituals. My favourite part was the silence of the new city. The carless streets were lined with grass-mats to encourage soft stepping.

“Not quite there,” were Gillian’s words, I think.

I looked at language. I remembered the uneasiness of trying to navigate the yoghurt section of a Parisian supermarket. Daily life in a foreign land is eased by routine. So, I wrote a story about a man, newly migrated, whose language was primarily visual. He made rubbings. The story included text and actual rubbings. Sometimes, (actually oftentimes) I feel words are insufficient and incomplete. Words cannot tell the whole story. In a two-dimensional medium I sometimes turn to image in an attempt to reach a more ancient level of narrative.

“You haven’t quite got it yet,” said Gillian.

She was right.

I tried again, and then several more times. As my sense of failure increased I reached further. I wrote poems, lists, took research notes, drew clusters of words looking for patterns of emotion.

Migration is big. I was suffocating.

I did the thing I least wanted to do and looked at the migration stories from my own family. (How predictable, obvious.) I mucked around with my family documents in the National Archives. I looked at other people’s families. Now I was really drowning! There’s love and death and strength from long ago; it’s all there, for anyone to read.

“That’s more like it,” said Gillian.

(no subject)

We have Weather (possibly still incoming, but Weather). My brain seems to have short-circuited. The rest of my evening has been cancelled.

In other news, my paper for AussieCon is the right length. I knew we had Weather because I read it aloud and the words didn't want to work. While the words slid around lazily, I pondered the joys of migraines. So my paper makes no sense and has no conclusion, but it's the right length. If there's anyone not going to AussieCon who would like to have a quick read and tell me why it makes no sense, I would be very grateful. You don't need to know how to pronounce Feuchtwangler to read my paper, but it helps.

In other, other news, since I've received a bunch of emails asking, the launch of Baggage is at 1 pm Thursday 2 September, Borders South Wharf, 20 Convention Centre Place, South Wharf.

In other, other, other news there may be medlar or cherry liqueur (mine own) at a CSFG function at AussieCon. We're sorting out transport. What I need to do next is find the right sized box.

In other, other, other, other news, I've run out of writers to badger about Baggage, so you now have to wait until I can read more Angry Robot books before there's anything interesting on the blog.

In other, other, other, other, other news I no longer own 96 herbs and spices. I've had a bit of a cooking spree and I'm under fifty. Still no epazote or spikenard. With epazote I can do amazing bean dishes and with spikenard I can do astoundingly delicious hypocras, but if they're not readily available, then they're not. My local magic shop has spikenard, actually, but when I said I wanted to cook with it, they wouldn't sell it to me because it's not food grade.

In other, other, other, other, other, other news I have thought very carefully and decided that Paul Davies is a better explainer of physics to people like me than Brian Cox. And whenever I have my time travel sorted, someone gives me a new theory that's related to the previous ones but has all-new problems. So I don't have my time travel sorted and my dreams are filled with wormholes.

In other, other, other, other, other, other, other news... there is none. I just wanted to see if you would read 'other, other, other, other, other, other, other.'