Friends

This week at Captain Sandwich's Aquarium of Bliss, you can enjoy Daniel Euphrat's story Jack and the Tiny Kittens!

Mambo!

Just a quick word to let you all know that I'll be leaving the flat tonight/tomorrow morning, off to a summer house by the sea. I'll be back Saturday night.

I will be taking the laptop but suspect internet connection will be non-existent (as 'twas in England).

So you know when you don't see me around.

Have fun and play nice!

If hope keeps your fire burning when you're giving all your effort but you can see when to stop, then you've got hope nailed.  If you live in hope and use it to keep going when you should stop, or if you live in hope and therefore don't act, then it's got you nailed.

So, to answer your question, I try not to hope.  I do my best in the circumstances and keep a weather eye on conditions.  If things turn out well, I'm delighted.  If not - I try to turn my attention to something more useful.  

Evening fellow maniacs!

For the longest time i've been meaning to get my thumb back into the education pie. I think i'm ready to make the leap sometime this year. My passion lies with photography. I believe that I have an acceptable natural talent, but I want to learn how to use it instead of just pointing the camera at stuff and using my gut.

I'm planning on doing a few CAE courses just to get my chops up to scratch, but after that i'm looking for something a little more formal. Does anyone have any experience with photographic TAFE courses? Have to be nights as I work full time.

Not really sure how to phrase this, but my goals would be more along the lines of photojournalism or any kind of documenting. "recording of life" as it were. I love to shoot the clubs and love street work.

please, don't take this as a plug, but this is my site. Maybe someone can look at it and see if my particular style is beter suited to one course over another.

many thanks in advance all!

There will possibly be a break in my usual word counts.

I spent today making a few minor fixes to the draft of Thought and Memory which is being sent out to beta readers. It still needs some serious work, but I think I’m too close to the work right now to be able to make the changes needed. And so, Thought and Memory will be laid to rest for a while.

Where to now? My first order of business is to read through the manuscript of Shaede (since it’s been at least a year since I last looked at it), perhaps make minor changes and then work up a query letter. And then query as many agents as humanly possible. And then wait.

I don’t expect to be working on Shaede for too long, though. Which means that I need to decide on the next project.

I do have a sequel to Shaede, Daemon, which is in very rought draft form. I also have a sequel/companion to Thought and Memory, of which I have something like six chapters. I also have the vampire novel, Requiem, which is mostly existing only in my head right now.

Or I could just work on some short stories. Which, if I’m completely honest, is something I rarely like I to do. Novels are where it’s at for me.

Decisions, decisions.

[cross-posted from my website]

The number of halls available for hire versus the number I want to call about is a bit scary.

So, recommendations? I'm looking for a hall for a birthday party, for an affordable price. It needs to be big enough for... ohhhh, say 100 people. I'd like to to already have some AV stuff (like a mic) so I don't have to hire it.

I'd also like it to be close to the city, like only a couple of suburbs out, and close to PT. I live in St Kilda East so bonus points the closer it is to me.

Halo Dance Party

Absolute tosh!

My Storytellers Unplugged column for today. "Think about what you're doing, not how you're doing it."

Shadow Unit: "Vigil"  Part 1. Part 2. Part 3. (more to follow)

---

Right. So that's done. What next?

2008
Revise "The Red in the Sky is Our Blood" (this week or next.)
Revise Bone and Jewel Creatures
Finish Chill (real damned soonish, now, I hope)
Revise One-Eyed Jack and the Suicide King
Write S2 Shadow Unit episodes (looks like 2.5 right now, unless stuff changes.)
Write Boojumverse horror collab with truepenny
Write "Smile"
Write "Snow Dragons"

2009
Rewrite The Sea thy Mistress
Write Patience & Fortitude (if it sells.)
Shadow Unit S3

http://chavelaque.blogspot.com/2008/07/all-good-things.html

Jott, a phone/e-mail service that allows you to call a number, name a recipient, record a voice message, and then have that voice message delivered to the recipient as both a text message and e-mail, FREE. It's pretty amazing.Wall-E: What everyone else in the world has said.
Hancock: Not a perfect movie by any means, but an altogether original take on the superhero mythos, with some

2016 words on Seven for a Secret today, for a completed submission draft, and I just sent it in.

Boys and girls, it's time for a nice glass of something bad for my liver. And a couple naproxen, because my back has just announced its feelings about me being in this chair since 7 am this morning.

Whew.

 バトン地雷で～～す （っていうか誰も本気にしていないか）

足跡つけたみなさん、是非やっていってね～～
（やらなかったマイミクさんの日記には、出張ばとんしちゃいますよ～～）

例）につづいておすきな国の言語で責めてくださ～～い


魂に光をもたらす珠玉の名言
http://mixi.jp/view_community.pl?id=1131694

を参考にしました。



★★[各国語編] 魂に光をもたらす珠玉の名言　バトン★★

日本語）
○死して不朽の見込みあらば、いつでも死すべし。
　生きて大業の見込みあらば、いつまでも生くべし。
　　　　　　　　　　　　　（吉田松陰） 　


例）英語：
You can stop your life at anytime if you know that you would be appreciated for ever after your death but you must live when you know that you are going to do an big job while you are still alive.
- Shoin Yoshida

...どうですかね、これで何か意味あるのでしょうか？？
ま、気にせず、つづけてください。

A heads-up for those interested in Melbourne history and architecture. Melbourne Open House is happening on 20 July. The public will be able to see inside such buildings as Melbourne Town Hall, Capitol Theatre, Manchester Unity Building, Nicholson Building, St Paul's Cathedral, etc. More info here:

http://www.melbourneopenhouse.org/cms-program/buildings/buildings.php

35 days to a sale on  rewrite to Paradox.

yesterday my son and his partner came out to raid our combined music collection for songs they wanted played at the memorial service for Max, next weekend. I expected that, as nearly all Keith's music was here, a good percentage of the tunes chosen would come from there.

I was wrong. Instead they took nearly all their songs from my collection. They chose songs that they had loved as children, listening to the music their parents played. But the one choice that has me ever so slightly weepy? These two teenagers went looking for an instrumental piece to play after they've read their poems, for the background while they light a candle for their son. Keith knew exactly what he was looking for; his mother's favourite Black Sabbath song, Fluff. Jacinta had never heard it before, but fell in love with it too. 

I never realised, til yesterday, how much I had influenced my children. Jason, who has issues with a lot of music accepts Fluff, because he is so accustomed to hearing it

July 6, 2008 Progress Notes:

Above

Words today: 5000.
Words total: 70,500 MS Word, 85,000 SMF.

85,000 / 90,000 (94.4%)

Reason for stopping: Tonight I was just gunning for as much as humanly possible, and hell, let's see if we can get a draft. But there's at least two scenes in front of my face that need a delicacy that bled out of my fingers three hours ago, and really, I'm not on a deadline. Tomorrow.
Munchies: Pizza, iced Stash blueberry.

Darling du Jour: I stand middle, and that's important too in its way. The man in the middle's kept safe as Safe, guarded by each body that walks the Duty with the whole of their life. The man in the middle's job is to carry the Tale if every man else falls, and by wit or stealth or sacrifice, take the word of their dying home to Safe.
I stand middle, and Ari stands with me.

Words Matthew Won't Admit to Knowing: N/A
Mean Things: Oh, man. Where do I even start?
Research Roundup: N/A.
Books in progress: Robertson Davies, The Lyre of Orpheus.
The glamour: Got some dirt for the nice new windowbox and planted it, slush, support mail, some various tidying. My air conditioning appears to be broken, so I put in a work order and hopefully they fix it soon. For my final trick, I will start bread before I go to sleep.

---

Yup, I was right. That wasn't wrapping by 85,000 words. Oh book, when did you get so long and unattainable?

That was six hours' good hard work, and while I'm not unhappy with it, it will need to be gone over with care on the next draft. I halfway don't care right now. I can feel the downhill momentum on this manuscript, finally, and it's just rushrushpush to the end, to hit that final line.

Very soon I must start making the list of things to fix on Draft the Two.

Oof.

Learned tonight that Chris Cevasco will be publishing "The Place That Makes You Happiest" in issue #13 of Paradox. I am immensely happy to have sold to him a second time (and on consecutive stories too), but I'm especially pleased about this one because it brings my really bad lucky streak concerning rewrites to an end at last. Every rewrite I've done until now has been rejected by the market that requested it, so of course I wasn't quite so confident I would sell this one, especially considering the rewrite was one of the most extensive one I've done on request. But Chris thought the rewrite went really well and he really likes the story, which is always fantastic to hear. This was also my WotF finalist story from second quarter of 2007, and I'm really happy to see it go to my own personal favorite magazine.

I owe thanks to several folks who helped along the way with this one: marshall_payne , who read and critiqued the very first draft of this; aliettedb , who read not only the pre-Polish Challenge version before I muckied up the ending, but also read and approved my work on the final, final draft; tchernabyelo  and theladywolf , for their fantastic LH Polish Challenge crits (in which both suggested I kill that really bad ending. I replaced it with a not-quite so bad ending that I ended up chopping off under editorial request); and finally, my good friend Travis Ramsey, who will unfortunately never get to read the story he inspired, but I think he'd have appreciated it. He's been gone since Christmas of 2002, taken far too young by brain cancer, but hardly a day goes by that I don't think about him in some small way.

From Ellen Datlow (ellen_datlow):

I've just found out that Tom Disch committed suicide in his apartment on July 4th. He was found by a friend who lives a few blocks away.

I'm shocked, saddened, but not very surprised. Tom had been depressed for several years and was especially hit by the death of his longtime partner Charles Naylor. He also was very worried about being evicted from the rent controlled apartment he lived in for decades.

I last visited with him about a month ago, when I ran into him shopping at the Greenmarket across the street from where he lived (he rarely went out because he had trouble walking). He invited me up for cheese and bread which we bought together at the market and I visited for an hour or two. He seemed more optimistic about his work than he'd been for at least a year as he had three books/novellas coming out over the next year.

Tom wrote wonderful stories (I only read one or two of his novels but kept meaning to read more) and if you haven't ever read the collections Getting into Death or Fundamental Disch you need to find and read them.

Anyone know where I can find some? How about Torchwood season three info?

In the unlikely event you have missed the news thus far, Ellen Datlow with a sad report on the death of Thomas Disch. I never got to meet him, but I’ve been reading his work all my life.

My condolences to all who knew and loved him.

Originally published at jlake.com. You can comment here or there.

For your reading pleasure:
Things they don't tell you (but should)
This is tremendously instructive, and almost completely true, particularly this, this and this and especially this. I'm not sure about this, though, since I have no experience. Anyone? :)

Today is the day
I have no idea what this is about. But it's interesting. If you figure it out, tell me. I think it's a metaphor for love, combined with copious helpings of The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. PS I'm never coming back.

Dad just stopped in, on his way home from a pickin’ session. Grandma only dozes sort of fitfully, so it was a fair guess that she might be awake and, indeed, she was. He asked her if she remembered chestnut trees before the blight.

She said that they used to have them in their yard and in the hog yard. At the farm in Middle Tennessee, they also had some chestnuts, which she called tame chestnuts. She said they were prone to get worms in them, not like the wild ones in the woods. Grandma remembers them dying off, but couldn’t recall if that was in the 30s or 40s.

They used to also have hazelnut bushes in her mother’s yard. Dad said that he didn’t know they ever grew hazelnuts in Tennessee.

Comments? -- Link

http://scalzi.com/whatever/?p=976

As noted, a longer write-up on InConJunction is coming up later, but for now, dig on this:

A sketch of yours truly from Howard Tayler, of Schlock Mercenary fame, who was also a Guest of Honor at the convention this weekend. I especially love that he drew me with hair.

Everyone who looked upon it said “dude, that would make an excellent LiveJournal icon.” I agree, although for clarity, one needs to fiddle with the word bubble:

Expect this to start showing up on my LiveJournal comments soon.

In any event, very cool of Howard to do the sketch. Give him link love and go visit his site, please, if in fact you do not visit it already.

 Is it some kind of omen to print out Teh Manuscript for line editing, only to immediately get a vicious papercut?

(Right in the soft spot between my thumb and first finger... ow ow ow.)