Loving & loathing

It's the last day of May, can you believe it! And I think June's supposed to be the first month of summer, right? So, tomorrow's forecast of rain and a high of just 14 °C is clearly wrong...

In honour of a new month and a new season, I'm going to write my first "loving & loathing" post. I see a lot of these kinda posts on other blogs and feel like I just gotta get on board!

IN:

• Coffee-flavoured Bailey's. Totally delish over ice.
• Bank holidays. Can't beat a three-day weekend to chill out!
• Inglot. A Polish cosmetics brand with an awesome store in Westfield mall. They are great value and loads of fun! I will def be going back. Pity they have a crap website with MUSIC! I can't stand websites with sound.

OUT:

• Writer's block. I've been struggling to move forward with In Finding for the last few weeks. Hating every word I write. It's this one scene - I need to get it right before I can go on. Gah!
  
• Being in the UK right now. All my family are together in NZ! My brother & his wife & in-laws have flown there for a holiday and I wish I was there too.
• Folk music on TV ads. Okay I admit, this isn't a "dislike right now", it's a "dislike all the time". I'm so OVER cutesy folksy music on advertisements. I blame the bouncy ball ad for starting it all.

Greenwich on a Sunday

It's a bank holiday weekend! I looove 3-day weekends. Today I went out to Greenwich with some buddies.

The view from the place where time began:


And my loot from Greenwich markets:

• Nigerian vegetable stew and bean stew with rice.
• Chorizo.
• Fat olives stuffed with pimentos.
• Honey crusted almonds.
• Lemon herbs & sprices marinade.
• Freshly ground irish whiskey coffee (this smelled so amazing, the whole market smelled of it, I had to get some!)
• And a bottle of Bordeaux red wine I picked up on the way home

Yum!

Book cover design

Today at lunchtime, I found a few blogs about book cover design. I've known for a while that authors get no say in how their books look -- which I understand but still think sucks -- but I never knew that even publishers can get their selected designs overturned by the big time booksellers!

Thinking about that, I wonder how wickedly cool cover designs even get out there in the first plase - e.g., Jonathan Safran Foer's Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close.

Are there marketing departments in publishing houses that just stamp their feet and refuse to back down? Are there any authors that do get a say - JK Rowling, Stephen King?

I wonder how a publisher might choose to illustrate the story I'm writing at the moment, In Finding. It's a paranormal chick-lit. So. Some kind of wistful woman on a beach and scrawly handwriting for the title? haha, my poor story. Actually, the book I've just finished reading is Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger and you know what? Kind of paranormal chick-lit-y... kind of... but no headless pink ladies on that cover. Instead its cover is dark, and the title suggests darkness too. I thought it wasn't.

Here's what I browsed through today:

• Guardian books blog: "Judge a cover by its book - the conservative tastes of over-mighty retailers have resulted in generic jackets that say nothing about their contents."
• The Book Design Review blog - favourite covers of 2009. Vote for your favourite! (Mine is Columbine).
• A list of Smashing Magazine's faves - includes some beaten up, old school style covers.

11th book of 2010

Wastelands
Sories of the apocalypse
by multiple authors

Love! I love love love apocalypse stories and this is one big ole book full of em!

There's stories from authors including Octavia E Butler, Orson Scott Card, Elizabeth Bear, Stephen King and Gene Wolfe...

My favourites were:

The People of Sand and Slag by Paolo Bacigalupi. Vivid, a grey and grainy feel, terrifically sad in this brilliant way where the narrator and characters are not but you, as the reader, your heart breaks a little.

Never Despair by Jack McDevitt. Because it has Churchill and he's painted so very neatly. A quiet character study in a ruined world.

Ginny Sweethips' Flying Circus by Neal Barrett, Jr. Rockingly rowdy and fun approach to the apocalypse, flavours of Tank Girl and Mad Max, as Ginny drives around with her companions selling sex, tacos & dangerous drugs. Great stuff.

Episode Seven: Last Stand Against the Pack in the Kingdom of the Purple Flowers by John Langan. The last story in the anthology and the best by far, in this huge way, this engrossing phenomenal story way. From the construction of the words, to the characters and how they are forced to change in mere moments, from the crazy fucked up world that he's invented here - roaving savage beasts and people turning into flowers - it's all amazing. I feel like I could read this story over and over again and get more out of it every time.

If you like post-apocalyptic stories then you should check out this book!

One day I will write my own version(s). I think you can write as many shorts as you want but you only get one novel (Don't ask me where that rule came from. It just appeared!) So, as much as I desperately want to write a sprawling post-apocalypse novel, I'm going to let it simmer in my brain for a while until I have the best kind of skills to write it well, to write it the way it deserves.

9th and 10th books of 2010

Bertie, May and Mrs Fish: Country Memories of Wartime by Xandra Bingley.

A memoir book I picked up in one of the charity shops on North End Rd. I got this one because most of it is set during WW2 / post WW2, about a girl growing up in the English countryside, and I'm trying to absorb details about this time period for the story I'm writing. This book has quite a different writing style to it - full of ellipses, no quotation marks, people's dialogue running into the text. I didn't like this book, to be honest, but I finished it. Mostly because I'm doing these blogposts about what I've read so I don't feel like I can drop a half-read book now!

The Art & Craft of Storytelling by Nancy Lamb

One of the books about writing that I selected for inspiration. Sadly, this book didn't quite kick it off for me. It feels super weird to say this, but it was too basic. I knew all the stuff she was writing about. I found myself skimming pages, skipping ahead. Still, it covers a good range of information and I may use chapters for reference when I go back to edit my current story. And I found a couple of quotes I liked. First from Nancy, the writer herself. She said "honour your art" (well, actually she said "honor your art"...) in a piece about making sure you write, if you want to be a writer. And I like that. If you have the call to write, then you need to honour that. It's the perfect concept.

The other was this quote from Eddy Peters about the English language: "Not only does the English Language borrow words from other languages, it sometimes chases them down dark alleys, hits them over the head, and goes through their pockets." It made me laugh.

A big fake foam shark!

This has been a strangely productive Wednesday after a couple of weeks of slackness on the writing front.

Tonight I made some minor edits to Piscky's Ascent, the short story I wrote in January. Then I renewed my membership the OWW (Online Writing Workshop for Sci-Fi) and posted the story for crits. I'm going to submit this story. Somewhere, not sure yet. Here's the thing: I've never submitted anything before. Apart from to writing competitions. But not anything for publication. And it's time to do something about that!

I'm going to get myself re-absorbed into the OWW and post some more crits of my own (only 2 more and I will attain "Veteran Reviewer" status!) I've been a member there, on and off, since 2001. Holy sardines, Batman! (I saw some of the original 1966 Batman movie tonight - I've never seen it before! - and it's just awful! I think it jumped the shark before the Fonze was even born - have you seen the foam-shark attack? It attacks Batman while he's hanging from the ladder of a helicopter. Luckily, Robin passes him a handy can of Shark-Repellent-Bat-Spray to ward off the shark, which falls off Batman's leg and then EXPLODES in the ocean. Yep.) Anyway, the workshop is brilliant and if you are an amateur writer in the sci-fi field I highly recommend it.

After the OWW sojurn, I added a few hundred words to In Finding and broke through the 60,000 word mark. A lot of the last 10 k words on that are crap but I need to write more of the story before I know how to go back and fix them. We.are.getting.there.slowly.

Sometimes the most frustrating thing about writing is just how slow it is. For me, at least. Knowing that I have to finish this first draft before I can even start editing, and that process will be lengthy enough too.

Then I played around with another short story that's been brewing since I dialled up some prompts on the story spinner. It doesn't feel as solid to me as Piscky's Ascent, but all short story experience is good experience.

Now, I'm going to publish this, brush my teeth, and settle down to read more of my latest book (Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse - a collection of short stories by some LEGENDARY writers - review will come when I finish it!)

Happy Saturday!

It's another beautiful weekend day in London. I'm super happy with the weather here lately. It's been so lush. Fingers crossed we finally get a decent summer. I personally think I deserve it after living here for almost 4 years without one... Today it's supposed to hit 21 degrees C. WOAH guys. The TWENTIES. That's big.

Duffster and I are off to a BBQ this afternoon at my friends' place. Typically for a bunch of Antipodeans, as soon as the sun comes out, we wheel out the BBQ. This is the second one of the season already! I have some steak pieces marinating on the bench, and we've been tasked with bringing cheese & crackers. We'll pick up some cider on the way and I hear there's Pimms on the cards too!

I am coming down with a cold though, boo! Why does that always happen on a Friday so you get sick on the weekend?! Hopefully I don't infect everyone else on this gawguss sunny afternoon...

Sunday it's Anzac Day - New Zealand & Australia's Poppy Day. Last year, we all went to the dawn service at the London memorials in Hyde Park. I'd love to go again this year, especially as it's on a weekend day again so you can get up early and observe then go back home and get back into bed! But because I'm not feeling so well I think I'll pass.


I'm glad I went last year though. It's a special and important day to respect. Maybe I'll make some Anzac biscuits on Sunday instead...

/photo from http://evanelam.photo-log.com