Friday, November 23, 2007

More Malaysian encounters...

So they trundled me off to the airport again, sat me on a plane and told me to be ready for another adventure...

This time to Kuala Lumpur, where I was to spend a week working in the Ulu Langat core warehouse, just on the outskirts of KL itself. Another dodgy taxi ride each day to and from work, up over the mountains. That was actually pretty cool; I was expecting--and hoping--to see monkeys scampering amongst the trees and swinging on vines, with the city as an interesting backdrop, but no, that didn't happen. I did see an awful lot of rain though. Sheer, unrelenting rain.

Put your head in the kitchen sink and turn the tap on full. That's what it was like. Make sure the water is warm, too. How these mad taxi drivers manage to see where they're going, I've got no idea. All the motorcyclists congregate under bridges or wherever they can find shelter during these downpours and hope for the rain to stop (good luck to them). Meanwhile, my taxi zipped by, the driver chattering away and me, confused and trying not to look out the window, forcing myself not to clench the seat or fret over the fact that the seat belt didn't work....

And humidity... urgh. I'm hoping I can set up a project to do research in Antarctica next time. I've had enough of the tropics.

I came home a few inches shorter, which is a problem because I really can't afford to spare any inches. But it was so, so humid that every time I stepped outside I just started melting. Me dribbled off me in torrents. I just didn't have enough undies to cope.

And the hotel? Oh boy, what a luxury resort that was..... Next time (if there has to be a next time) I think I'll take my tent and pitch it in the jungle. I'd certainly prefer that over a 3-star hotel that is just pretending and is really only a half star - perhaps a black hole is more accurate, judging by the number of room service meals that went missing.

(to tell the truth, I enjoyed the jungles of PNG much more than the human wilds of KL)

One good thing on this adventure was the discovery of a second hand bookshop directly across the road from my hotel. Joy! And the best thing? There was a huge sci-fi/horror/fantasy section!!!! Happy-happy-joy-joy. Books for 5 ringits, roughly $1.70 Australian.

Yes, I did fill up my suitcase at the expense of clothes. Who needs clothes anyway? Tarzan seemed to get by pretty well without them. Okay, sure, I'm a bit more rounded than he is, and a little whiter, but that's just more reason why I should strip down and go live in a tent in the tropical jungles.

I could take my suitcase full of books...

Saturday, July 28, 2007

Why writing horror isn't fun...

My Malaysian taxi driver is starting to freak me out.

I've spent 4 days in his company now, with Mr. K--g picking me up in the morning from the hotel and dropping me off at the S---l offices, then doing the opposite at the end of the day. Which is all good. He's promt, reliable and the fare never changes.

Excellent.

But then yesterday, on the ride home, I was staring out the window at this wacky world in which I've found myself when, from the corner of my eye, I saw Mr. K--g's hand moving towards the centre console. I think it was the way it was moving that caught my attention. So I kept watching, pretending I wasn't. Slowly, he picked up a pen, hid it in his hand and then just as slowly moved is hand back to the steering wheel.

Hmm, said I.

Mr. K--g then swaped the pen to his other hand, doing it like he was trying to hide doing it. Then he droped his arm to his side and hid the pen under his outside leg.

All of which I found quite intriguing...

The ride went on. Only, every now and then, I could see him gripping the pen like he might a knife. Lifting his hand slowly, like he was getting ready. Every time I looked across, he hid the pen under his leg again.

Okay, not so cool now; by this stage, my paranoia had woken up and was bitching about being away from home, taken to a place where I had no idea how anything worked, what people were saying or what I was eating...

I wanted my wifey.

I've seen Hostel, I know what happens to foreigners; I'm going to end up in a huge warehoue in the slums somewhere with Stinking Stan paying to have his way with me...

See? It's just not fun being a horror writer. Why couldn't I write romantic stories?? Maybe then Mr. K--g and I would develop an illicit love affair, only for me to break his heart when I returned to Australia...

Damn this muse of mine.....

Wednesday, July 25, 2007

Lost in Translation

Well, I'm in Miri, in a hotel room listening the the near-monsoonal rain...

More fieldwork, more travel, more time away from my family (and house!), which I'm not too fond about, but hey, at least I'm getting paid to see another country.

This place is wild; the taxi drivers become your best friend--especially when they find out you will be needing a taxi to and from work every day for 10 days!--but I'm pretty sure they were all formula one drivers in their previous lives. Hell, we've topped 140km/h so many times that it's no longer exhilerating. And those road markings? Those lines indicating the lanes? Nah, that's just grafitti; you don't have to pay attention to those... And how much space do you really need when you're overtaking? So long as you don't hit another car, a few centimeters will do it, right? A miss is a miss; it's like winning by 20 points or winning by 1. Either way, you still win.

And it's muggy, so humid that I'm rapidly running out of undies.

Was sitting in the hotel bar just after dinner (now there was a feed!! Aint gonna need to eat for a good 3 or 4 days now), reading one of the local papers, and I came across a couple of things that caught my attention....

The Malaysian government was 'deeply troubled by the growth of "irresponsible" alternative media.' For examples, blogs :) The govt will be taking legal action against bloggers who flagrantly belittle Islam or the Yang de-Pertuan Agong. They want to see blogs used as a means of obtaining accurate information, a reference point for honest opinions. Crap, that's me out.

There are no laws to restrict the number of passengers in private vehicles here in Malaysia. Apparently, it's not easy to limit the number of passengers, although one new proposal is for those sitting in the back to have to wear seatbelts......... Go figure.

For a mere RM17 (about $7 or $8 Aussie dollars), you can buy a 'bona fide' medical chit (a doctor's certificate), complete with a stamp from a government hospital. The undated stamps carry all different doctors' names. The chits comes from an unknown syndicate that has been running for about 6 months, but you have to be in the know to get one.

Machines (eg, the washing machine) were causing women to become obese, especially once they passed 40 (the women, that is, not the machines)...

And on the topic of women, apparently more of them are becoming involved in dadah trafficking. Nope, dadah nothing like doodoo; it's actually a heck of a lot more serious. Had to look it up after reading that article.

In Rantau Panjang, the State Anti-Smuggling Unit foiled an attempt to smuggle 90 sacks of cockle spat into Thailand. The monetary value of these sacks was RM72,000 (about $24,000 Aussie dollars). What the heck's 'cockle spat?' I know what a cockle is, and it's pretty tasty, but a cockle spat sure doesn't sound appealing...

About this stage through the paper, I was feeling kinda ignorant, so I went and got me another beer. That always helps to understand things a little better, I've found. Hopefully, the Tiger beer would go well with the Long Island Ice Tea I'd had at dinner.

So thus freshly whetted, I continued...

Next article: Immigration in a spot over two 'princesses.' Seems two young ladies, claiming to be princesses from the ancient Sunda empire, were detained at the 'buffer zone' between Malaysia and Brunei. They were carrying passports issued by the Sunda Democratic Empire, but unfortunately for them, Sunda isn't recognised by Malaysia. Immigration has no idea of the young ladies' status, and were even confused over how to go about deporting them, as they were found in this buffer zone. The poor lasses; last heard, they were still being detained, 14 days later...

The last article I read was by journalist Rehman Rashid, who said he was given some transformative advice when he started out in the business 25 years ago, advice that could be summed up 'in a single earthly colloquialism: Lu siapa?'

Rashid goes on to say; "Get out of the office, out of the house, out of the comfort zone and out to where real people lived real lives in the real world. Get them talking and listen to them, taking notes."

Seems like pretty good advice.

Saturday, July 21, 2007

The Call of the Hammer...

Well, it's been a wild time of late - brought a house and am off to Malaysia on Monday for fieldwork...
Woosh!
Did you see that? No? That was me, wizzing past - at least that's how it's felt of late.
Buying a house is an exciting experience. It's also stressful, mad, chaotic, and involved! Especially when the settlement is only 6 weeks! And even more especially when your - well, no, I'd best not start complaining here about who didn't do what they were paid to do... Let's just say, my phone bill was in the hundreds, my work output dropped dramatically, and scotch never tasted so good....

Our brand-spanking new house from the paddock...

But it all worked out in the end (only just!), and now we have a house. A you beaut, brand new, modern as heck house, 4 bedrooms and a double garage. Got just under 4 acres, too, of flat green land. The horses are loving it ('cept they're getting a bit, er, large...). My wife is loving it (she had the biggest smile upon her beautiful face). I'm loving it too.
I'm even loving the hour and a half+ ride to work and home again each day (no, seriously, I am, hear me out), cos I sit on the train with my headphones on, listening to Marilyn Manson, Dimmu Borgir, Rob Zombie, Rammstein, Slip Knot, Cradle of Filth, etc, and write.
And it's been bloody brilliant. I've done so much work on my novel this past week, it's such a great feeling. The effort is so focused; I can't go anywhere, can't really do much else- I feel like my writing has been solid, and I feel like I'm really getting somewhere.
And now, not 2 weeks after we moved, I have to head off to Malaysia (Kuala Lumpur and then Miri) for 2 weeks fieldwork. Collecting rock samples from core sheds this time, so no hiking through jungles for me (which is good, and bad, but mostly good). Instead, the company I'm working for are putting me up at a 5-star spa and resort....
Sigh... It's going to be such hard work :)
However shall I cope?

Friday, May 04, 2007

The Gruesome and the Ghost

Well, just watched Hostel - and I've got Saw II recorded ready to go, too...

I thought, to hell with it, I'll sit down and bear the gruesome and see what the hype is, or was, all about.

I'm not sure I worked it out. Hostel was okay but certainly not one of the most gruesome flicks I've ever seen, nor one of the best storylines, either. But it did make me think about things...

Hostel, Saw (and its sequels), Wolf Creek, The Hills Have Eyes - all of these flicks use 'loud' horror to express their story, and these movies are raking in the money at the cinemas. People love this shit.

Back when I was a teenager (God, so long ago now), I used to love this shit too; loved watching the most violent, disgusting flicks I could find. The more blood spilled the better. But now, I can barely watch when they show the blade slipping into the calf and slicing... Perhaps it's because I'm older and I value life more.

There are two quite dramatically different schools of horror; loud and quiet (there might very well be more, but these are my thoughts so if I say two, then two shall it be). Loud evokes feelings of disgust, while quiet causes shivers and feelings of fear, or fright, without actually showing anything (or everything).

I'm more a man of the quiet school. To me, the things that you don't see, or perhaps only glimpse from the corner of your eye, are the things that scare me best. Okay, sure, your loving next-door neighbour with the fetish for leather aprons, clamps, rusty blunt scalpels and hooks, and who knows where you leave your spare back door key, is pretty damn frightening, but that's different. It's a different kind of horror.

And I'm not sure I can explain why, clearly.

One is a fear of what might be done to you; the violation of your body, your sacred temple. It's the thought of that loon peeling off a steak of flesh while you thrash and scream, helpless to do otherwise. It's the terror of such pain, of such deformity. And in our most fucked up world, well, this type of thing is horrifying because it happens! Wolf Creek was based - perhaps loosely - on real events. The simple fact of the matter is that people torture people for no reason. And we, the sick voyers that we are, wanna watch. We get off on it.

But where is the fun in that? That shit happens in our world, and I choose to watch horror to escape from reality. Watching horror-snuff flicks just reminds me of what humans really are capable of. It does nothing to make me feel better about things. Sure, I might go, well struth mate, I'm sure as heck glad I'm not that poor unfortunate bastard, but at the end of the day, when I turn off the DVD, I'm more depressed than when I started watching because now I know so much more about humans. It's frightening what we can do...

Quiet horror, on the other hand, doesn't show you these extremes. It lets your mind play games with you. You're never quite sure what could happen. There could be torture, they may be things in the dark that are after you, or there might be nothing more than just your imagination and upbringing causing you strife. It's psychological. And it's spooky because it's more removed from reality than that torturous prick next door. Spooky in a different way, and certainly more enjoyable - for me, at least.

That's they key to the village; I like quiet horror because I find it more enjoyable than loud horror. You have to take that leap of faith and believe in the story, then the scares come. Once the flick finishes, you go on back to your real life and go, phew, what a rush. But you feel safe in your world 'cos you know there aren't any monsters, there are no ghosts.

You don't have to worry about the creaking floorboard in the middle of the night...

Thursday, April 26, 2007

Double figures

Great stuff!

I've just had a story accepted for Black Box, the sequel to the ground-breaking charity e-anthology Shadow Box, published by those great kids at Brimstone Press. Woohoo!

After looking over the list of contributors, there was no way I was going to miss out! That list reads like a who's who of Aussie spec-fic, and I wanted to be a part of it. And now I am.

Black Box is due for publication in January '08, so stay tuned for more details...

This marks my tenth story publication since I started focusing on fiction after my PhD, which finished in late 2005. I'll be the first to admit that it has taken a good year to get rid of all that deadly boring science writing out of my system (or at least to confine it to work), but this year, I've felt a freedom starting to appear in my writing, a free-flow of words that happens when the story demands to be told. It's a good sign.

Onwards and upwards, I say.

I'm a happy camper. And so is Darkling Muse, kind of... He has actually been throwing daggers at the other carnival folk through my lack of writing; he's pretty pissed at the moment, if truth be told... But it's been so hard getting back into my rhythm after PNG. I know it's been 3 weeks, but man...

Darkling's sideshow eyes have a real nasty gleam to them that makes me quite nervous. I try to tell my muse that he's making me feel uncomfortable being alone with him, but all he says is that he'd never harm me directly... (like that helps!)

At least my novel is chugging along - I've managed to finish the final edits on 23 of the 386 pages over the past 3 weeks, but neither myself or Darkling Muse is happy with such slow going. We really do need to crank up the pace. I aim to have this submitted to publishers by the end of the year.

And Macabre, that mystical magical beast of an anthology I'm editing with Angela, well, it's coming along nicely. There are some great stories slated to appear in the collection, both original and re-prints by new writers and by some of the best we've got. We're deep into the editing at the moment, but it's coming, and oh, what an anthology it'll be. We've got a great little surprise in store, too....

Okay, I've gotta go, the shadows are calling...

Monday, April 16, 2007

Thank you for the recognition

I found a cool surprise waiting for me in my inbox when I got back from the jungles of PNG the other week: I had been nominated for a Ditmar!

As it says on the Australian Ditmar Awards website, 'The Australian Science Fiction Achievement Awards, or Ditmars, are awarded by Australia's National Science Fiction Convention and are voted on by members of that convention. They are thus a popularity award representing the choice of Australian science fiction fandom.'

I've been nominated in the category of Fan Achievement for my work establishing and promoting the Australian Horror Writers Association.

So thank you, to those who voted for me. You guys rock.

But my name shouldn't be the only one up there. Carl has been here from the start as well, and is responsible for much of the admin work; he's the nuts and bolts guy, an invaluable member who has put in stacks of time over the years (he's also a cool vampire artist!). James, Kim, Mick, Kirstyn, Angela, Shane, David, Ian, Chris, Brian, Talie, Andrew - this is recognition for all the work these kids have done or are still doing.

The AHWA wouldn't exist without such a team effort, so thank you guys, for all we have achieved. We're not done yet, though, not by a long shot...

It's also great to see Angela up there for Brimstone Press , and Edwina Grey for Prismatic, Brett for Mother, Will for the mad clowns, Martin and his Carnies - aw gees, so many horror lads and ladies have been nominated, it's so good to see!

In case you haven't seen the list, check it out here.

Oh-oh, that shifty sideshow freak is approaching from behind, and he's looking anxious to get back into the writing after several weeks off, so....

Saturday, April 07, 2007

From the deep dark jungles...

I'm 3 belt holes slimmer after my 2 weeks in the jungles of PNG. I'm covered in cuts and bruises, stings and bites, but it was one heck of a rollicking adventure!!

And sheer bloody exhausting, too...

Breakfast was at 5am, then we finalised the plans for that day. For me, this meant confirming the region I'd be looking at, working out where to get dropped off by helicopter and where to be picked up and when (the latter done in case the signal from the walkies wouldn't make it to Dispatch back at camp).

Once the sun came up, we were off - we included myself and my two PNG locals, whose job it was to prevent me from falling down a ravine or off a cliff, stop me from getting lost or from stepping on Death Adders or bumbling into ants nest, warn me away from salaut (a nasty stinging tree that hurts like hell) - basically, try to keep me alive until the chopper came to take us back to camp.

Camp itself was situated about 50m above the Hegigio River, deep in the Southern Highlands Province of PNG.

Our camp in the Southern Highlands Province (taken from the chopper).

One of the spectacular views from the camp.
There were 101km of jungle to cover geologically, but we were only making on average about 3km a day because the landscape was so tough. If we weren't trudging through ankle deep mud that seemed intent on sucking you down, we were climbing up limestone cliffs or tumbling down steep descents.

My camera kept fogging up with the humidity, my clothes were soaking wet, I was covered in mud and hurting from all the things that had bitten or stung me, my muscles were aching and my head pounding, but for some inane reason, I was loving every second of it, even as much as I hated it!

It was a real adventure.

Our path through the jungle was barely a path; the company I was conducting the work for uses minimal bridging, that is, they do as little as possible to impact upon the environment. So there might've been a hand rail leading down a 60 degree slope, a mad looking ladder going up a cliff, or a tree slung over a river for you to balance your way across.

Some fairly decent bridging, actually...

Sometimes, there was no path at all, and we had to use machetes to cut our way through the jungle. My two guides were brilliant at preventing us from getting lost and for repeating all day long for two weeks, 'you don't touch this or tomorrow you won't work,' 'you don't touch that or tonight you won't sleep,' 'You must come this way,' 'don't go that way...'

This ladder continued up the face of a cliff for close to 100m.

At one stage, we rounded a corner and came across a huge python(?) lying on the path! We had to walk past it, which we did so slowly. Fortunately, it had no interest in us other than to keep an eye on what we were up to. We also encountered two Death Adders (one of which we nearly stood on) plus a small ground snake of some kind. There were tree kangaroos up in the canopy (which itself was about 50m high), cassowary, wild pigs (which tasted pretty darn good), and butterflies (or moths? Hercules moth, I think) about the size of backpacks!!!!! I kid you not... That's a ridiculous size for a moth to grow.

There were also hornbills flying from tree to tree, making an odd wooshing sound with their wings as they flew overhead, a cave filled with thousands of bats that came roaring out (just like you see in the movies!) when we disturbed them. Rivers disappeared into the ground, raging waterfalls came out of cliff faces - the limestone terrain was pitted and ravaged; caves and ravines were as numerous as the trees.

The snake in our path...


The cave of bats...

And then, after reaching our destination each day, we (or me, really; my two helpers were of an entirely differenlt level of fitness to me) collapsed on the helipad and tried to call up base to organise a lift home. The chopper was Bravo-Charlie. We were Geo-crew. Helipads were labelled with a number followed by a letter, and call signs went accordingly; alpha, bravo, charlie, delta, echo, foxtrox etc...

But of course, I kept forgetting, so my call signs went more like; apple, bat, carrot, dinosaur...

And then we waited for the chopper. What a joyous sound that beast was when your ears finally picked up the rotors. The heavy clouds would begin to roll in after lunch, so if visibility grew too bad, we'd have to camp out in the jungle overnight and then get a lift out the next day. I was hoping this would happen so I could experience a night in the wild, but honestly, after hiking across the terrain we'd been hiking across for the past 6 or 7 hours, all I really wanted to do was get back to base camp, take off my shoes and socks and clothes, stumble into a cold shower and then fall into bed...

One of the helipads, perched atop a rise in a small clearing...

And thus did I spend the next 11 days, reaching levels of exhaustion that I never knew possible...

Another of those wild views you get from the jungle...

But just when the end was in sight, all hell broke loose... A man, loaded up on drugs, went crazy with his machete and started destroying some of the company's property at another base about 15km away due east. He seriously wounded a couple of people when they tried to stop him, too. The police finally managed to get him under control and threw him in the slammer (there was a small police station at the second camp).

But the man then hung himself.

His clan believed the police had beat him to death, so they went on the rampage. Subsequently, all activities at that camp and at our camp were shut down, especially after the clan started firing automatic weapons at the cop shop, then disappearing into the jungle!!

The army was called in, and we had 17 heavily armed special forces men move into our camp, bringing a whole hoard of weapons with them. The clan were making threats to kidnap an expat, had blocked the only road into/out from the second camp.

I was due to fly home on Thursday 5th April; there was a meeting between the company I was working with, the police and the clan on the Wednesday before to try to sort out the issue (the clan were seeking compensation from the company I was working for, believing that the police were only there because the company was there, ergo it was all the company's fault).

At one stage, the clan sent away all their women and children (an ominous sign).

The plane from Cairns to the second camp was due in that afternoon, but if the problem got any worse, or if the pilot wasn't comfortable landing there, then that was it; I wouldn't be flying out on Thursday and would have to spend Easter over there under seige... But that never happened.

The plane landed, I got a helicopter ride down to the second camp on Wednesday afternoon, and flew out of the country on Thursday.

One of the last things the camp boss at the camp I had been staying at told me was that he had been asked if he had enough provisions should they be locked down for weeks... I hope the situation never grew any worse - there were a number of people hoping to get home within the next day or so.....

Anyway, that was my PNG adventure - rough, harsh, exhausting, exhilerating, mind-blowing and frightening.

Would I ever want to go back?

Hell yeah.

...going jungle for 2 weeks seems to make you quite hairy, for some reason...

Monday, March 12, 2007

Knockin' over the words

Darkling Muse, fresh from all sorts of sideshow terrors, has gripped my pen hand firmly the past month or so and forced me to finish my second novel, 809 Jacob. This one is currently 110,000 words long, and is one I actually started before my PhD.

I will set about doing the final edit run-through once I return from the jungles of PNG. I'm off for two weeks geological field work in the deep dark and spooky jungles of the Highlands from the 21st of this month, and man, what an adventure this will be!! I will get a helicoptor ride each morning out to the region we will be working on that day, then a ride back to the base camp each evening. Last time my boss was out there, he had a Death Adder fall from a tree onto his hat, and a crazy rebel point a home-made shotgun into his face! Definite story material...

I've also had a slight change of plan regarding my first novel. The idea in that book is bulging at the seams, so in line with my plan of developing it into a trilogy, I want to add a little more to it in order to link these new ideas. So, for now, 809 Jacob will take priority; I intend to submit this novel to publishers by the second half of this year (which will please the dark fellow).

But for the next 10 days before I fly out to jungleland, I will be finishing some short stories - and getting stabbed by needles and sorting out visas and getting Malaria pills.........

Friday, February 23, 2007

Fantastic Wonder Stories is coming...

My story The Wildflowers is set to appear in Ticonderoga Publications Fantastic Wonder Stories, which is going to be launched at SwanCon 32 "Inconceiveable" over the Easter Weekend, 6-9 April 2007 in Perth, Western Australia.

It's a desert story, set in the small dusty town of Elsewhere somewhere deep in Australia, where the desertfolk smile with shifty looks and shadows blow across the hazy mulga bush landscape towards town...

Pre-orders can be made here.

Ah, Darkling Muse is very happy today, cos we've also submitted the novel.....

Thursday, February 22, 2007

Ploughing on...

Well, Darkling Muse has finally cracked a smile. His hands have unclenched and he has stepped back from behind me - I'm glad he's no longer breathing over my shoulder 'cos I've gotta tell ya, his breath is ripe and full of dead things...

He's smiling because the novel synopsis is - finally and absolutely - done, and becasue I've got the time to start writing stories again.

First plan of action is to submit the novel, and that's both exciting and daunting (it's just a pity I can't send Darkling Muse in there to meet with publishers :)

My article called Australian Horror Fiction - An Overview is also done, all 6000+ words of it. Done and sent off to the editor of the collection, which will see publication in December in India!! While the article was a hard slog that took me from my muse, it did open up a whole world of early Australian horror, going right back to 1857. There's some pretty good colonial Australian 'horror' stories lurking about in history.

But I'm glad that article is done because I haven't managed to do much writing lately, and there are many, many ideas building in my head. They're starting to cram up against one another, so I'm going to have to put them into words very soon before that creepy sideshow fellow decides on another way to pry them from my head...

2007 continues to rumble along, with my 4th story for the year being published by Demon Minds. Already, I've had more stories accepted for publication in 2007 than I did in the whole of 2006, so that's pretty cool. I'm feeling in a good place with my writing now, so it's time to step up as gear. All that cluttered scientific jargon left over from my PhD has been cleaned out of my system and the words seem to be flowing quite well.

It's time to return to the carnival...

Saturday, February 03, 2007

The Ups and Downs of Writing

December and the start of January represented a great period for me and my writing, with three acceptances in a row, all short stories of 3000 words plus. Woohoo!!

Since I started writing seriously in late 2005, this is the best month I've had in this crazy adventure through the carnival.

And then, bang-bang-bang - three rejections in a row in January, just to bring me back down to Earth...

They were those frustratingly positive rejections, but rejections none-the-less. Still, I'll take 3 acceptances out of six submissions any day.

As for the novel, well, the synopsis caused me a few headaches, but with the help of two wonderful ladies - Kim Wilkins and Josephine Pennicott - I do believe I've finished it. I should be ready to launch the novel into the world of publishers within the next week or two. Frightening...

Here's a little bit of incentive - Dr. Seuss's first children's book was rejected by 23 publishers. The 24th sold 6 million copies.

Tuesday, January 16, 2007

Turning the Screw

So that's Christmas. There goes all the good will and cheer, the New Years celebration, the Xmas crackers, turkey and cranberry, rejoicing in the fact that the world's clock has ticked over another year and we're all still here - gone and dusted. So long and thanks for all the fish, as one cool book said.

And with the new year comes the renewed drive. This is gonna be the year I do it, the year my name is up in lights. Here are my goals and now watch me reach for them. That type of thing.

Well, Darkling Muse doesn't work that way - unfortunately. He didn't stop over Christmas, didn't celebrate the way I wanted to. His dark circus continued their shows, his carnival companions taking no time off. His drive is formidable, sometimes more than I can cope with. The ideas (are they fictional or things that really happens backstage, beyond that heavy curtain? I shudder to think) come faster than I can write, blasting into my head on his hollering voice only to be echoed immediately by another.

He laughed when I told him I was going to post my New Years resolutions, threatened to involve me in his ideas in a whole new way, and the look upon his shadowed face when he said that - no, I'd rather not push him. So no New Years resolutions from me...

Darkling Muse doesn't believe in them. For him, each story is going to be better than the last, published in bigger magazines and collections. Every story is a stepping stone. He's a hard task-master - I'd hate to think what would happen should (and I'm whispering this so he won't hear me) he fail a resolution - were he to let them be known, that is...

So I'm learning his method - every story we write is going to win an award, is going to be published in a best-selling collection, gonna become a classick. And while the stories seep from my pores under his guidance, the first novel is going to be at publishers, relentlessly, until it is published. The second novel has already been started, and the drive is on to finish that now, too.

First though, I'd better finish the synopsis for the first (am almost there).

Oh-oh, he's just realized what I said - I'd better go now.