My first photography portfolio:

Just some samples from my photography portfolio (which I’m handing in today, glee!) The rest are on my flickr account, which you can click through to easily enough. Some minor colour correction on all of these, no real photoshop magic involved.

A short short story that may ruin your day:

Yeah, I know I posted a list of great short stories only a week ago, but then I read this.

Have you ever finished a book and put it down and just stared into space, your mouth hanging open and eyes unfocused like you’d just stumbled from a car crash? That’s pretty much how I was when I finished this short-short. I’ll warn you up front, some might find this short a bit too horrible, parents especially. Personally, I was amazed at how the true horror lies not in what is said or what is done but what is left unsaid and what is taken away.

David Foster Wallace – Incarnations of Burned Children
courtesy of Esquire.com

The Ant Tower – final draft? Sure hope so! Any proofreaders?

So, in between all the crazy amounts of work I’ve been putting into my university assignments, I found the time (mostly all during tram rides) to do a final edit of The Ant Tower short story.

This is the fifth time I’ve gone through it in 11th months, and I think it’s at the point where I need to just suck it up and start sending it out to magazines. This draft is 2000 words shorter than the one I had posted previously (from around 10.5k down to 8.2k), some scenes have been cut, others have been smooshed together, and there’s been some minor rearranging of scene order. A lot of slow-moving fantasy dialogue has been cut, and everything is generally much tighter.

I’m happy enough with it, and all I need now is the approval of a few readers and a confirmation that I didn’t spell anything wrong (or screw up any tenses – some scenes have changed from past to present and back to past tense over the previous 3 drafts). Then I can send it out and try to forget about it while I get back to Alpha Slip.

Anyone feel like a quick read?

5 free stories you should read:

I like free things. That’s why I have some of my work here for free (although MAN it’s been a long time since I posted anything complete) and it’s why I support folk who publish free e-books. The best way to discover an author you’ll love forever is by reading something of theirs for free.

So here are five short stories I thought were pretty damn good, if not pretty damn excellent. Some might not be to your taste, but some might really grab you. If you do end up reading any of them, tell me what you think.

Raymond Carver – A Small Good Thing
It’s a story of grief and how people cope told in a very plain, subtle, unassuming way. Some folk find it overly slow and I won’t fight them over it but I found it heartbreakingly honest – a depiction of fear and grieving so far removed from the sensationalized emotion we see on TV every night.

Isaac Asimov – The Last Question
He apparently told folk it was his best story. I agree. When I think of what sci fi can accomplish, the ways in which it can make people stop and begin to contemplate new possibilities, I think of The Last Question.

Charles Stross – Down on the Farm
An intelligent, gripping, often extremely funny blend of paranormal and science fiction? IMPOSSIBLE. Although he uses the word “chuckle”, which is -2 points from me. Otherwise, Stross is solid as always.

Cory Doctorow – The Things that Make Me Weak and Strange Get Engineered Away
More clever sci-fi. Okay, shoot me, I like the genre. Cory does have a tendency to stray a bit too far into technobabble, but I think that’s why I love his stuff so much. Unlike Asimov, who makes me feel like I’ve learned something about the universe, or Philip K Dick, who makes me feel I’ve learned something metaphysical, Cory makes me feel like I’ve learned something practical with all his babble and hoo-hah.
Well. Maybe not with this particular story. But it’s fun nonetheless.

Ambrose Bierce – An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge
Written in 1890, An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge is still considered a classic of American literature. It was also one of the very first stories of its type to employ a particular type of ending which has been used and abused a hundred times over since. Not only a great story, but truly pioneering as well. Enjoy.

Some portraits, and some Alpha Slip

“Are you comfortable, Mr. Vice?”

They had sat him in a small interview room that reminded Vice of a walk-in freezer. The seat was cold. The table under his hands was cold. The mirror that stretched across one wall had an icy sheen.

“I’m fine, thankyou. I just want to know why I’m here.”

“The officers didn’t inform you? I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Would you like a drink? Coffee, tea?”

“Am I being arrested?”

“God no, Mr. Vice.”

“Hot chocolate, then.”

The officer frowned. He was young, smooth-chinned, and his eyes were tight platinum irises with bright blue pupils; Nikon lenses, the sort only old money could afford. “I hope the hot chocolate will… relax you, Mr. Vice. Help create a mutually co-operative mood?”

“Absolutely.” Vice forced a smile. “One hundred percent.”

The officer scowled. He took a cloth from his breast pocket and buffed the service medals on his collar before vanishing through the single door. When it closed there was the echo of heavy bolts thudding into the walls. Vice counted to ten. Then he cupped his hands over his mouth and pretended to cough.

“Dial: Gordon Club.”

So Alpha Slip has hit a bit of a wall, because I’ve written everything that I know about and now the big middle of the story is yawning wide, saying “Stick 40,000 words in meeeeeeeeee…” And I would, if I knew what to stick in there. But I’m absolutely lost.

Maybe I’m being too hard on myself. The first draft of Weathermen took me 3 years, and I’ve gotten a third of Alpha Slip down in just over a month and a half. That’s pretty good, yeah?

Anyway, to kill some time I started drawing portraits for the members of Warren Ellis’s Whitechapel forum, which is an all-round great place to hang out. It was extra nice when one of the members there reciprocated and painted a picture of ME!

Here are mine (all ballpoint pen and sharpie)

And here’s LokiZero’s painting of me in my gasmask! I’m very chuffed.

Japan, how I love thee

Alpha Slip is coming up on the 35,000 word mark (about 1/3rd of the story) so I thought I’d let myself take a two minute break to catch up on what the Japanese are doing these days.

Turns out, they’re making Wii games about bodybuilding. Check out the trailer for Muscle March, originally an arcade game, soon to be released on Wiiware.

So, an American footballer steals your tub of protein powder, and you and your friends must chase him down by striking poses in order to fit through very specific holes in walls. Am I in love? Yes. Yes, I am in love.

Nothing else to report. It’s a lovely day out. Time to do some vegetable shopping and finish some homework before hunkering down to push Alpha Slip over the 35k line. The question is, HOW did Fraser know where they were that night? Vice doesn’t know. I don’t know! HELP.

Guerilla Warfare

Business at usual doesn’t seem to be working in the publishing world. It hasn’t really worked for the past decade, really. First time authors are finding it near impossible to get either an agent or a publishing deal. Middle of the road authors find themselves stuck in a terrible limbo because their books don’t sell enough to get further deals. Everyone seems to be making less money per book sold. Some Aussie publishers are (apparently) just not paying their authors until the quarterly royalty cheques reach a certain size. It’s dodgy business all round.

It’s no surprise that new authors have spent the past few years trying to find new routes to success. The merits of print-on-demand services have been debated out the arse by much better folk than I. What I’m interested in are the merits of giving things away.

Australian Parallel Imports, and why everyone is so angry:

Update – after some more information provided by Garth Nix, I’m feeling a bit of a dummy. I dove into this debate without doing as much research as I should have, and I’m now feeling like I should offer an apology to the Aussie authors with whom I’ve been debating these past weeks. So, here it is:

I’m sorry. I straight up didn’t know what I was talking about.

I’ll leave the post here anyway, just so’s nobody can accuse me of pretending to have not been wrong. The parallel importation debate is much more complex than anything a single blog post or television interview could cover, and since all my experience in the debate comes from behind the desk of a shop, I don’t think I’m ready to really weigh in on it yet.

Again, apologies for having been been so arrogant, and hopefully I can put together a more reasoned blog post in the future.

Read on if you want to see the old post:

A preview of my current novel, Alpha Slip

This is the book that has stolen my attention away from my novelisation of The Ant Tower. It’s a sci-fi thriller in the style of Philip K Dick that is eating my waking and sleeping hours. I’ve done nothing for the past month but try and work out all the plot kinks and twists in this book and I’m loving the challenge.

What I’ve posted here is pretty much all that’s fit to read – it’s the only chronologically complete section of the book so far, so even if you ask real nice for MOAR you’ll have to wait. I really hope this lives up to what I want from it.

God, I haven’t been this excited about a novel since I first envisioned Weathermen while washing under my armpits one morning in 2004.

Continue to: Alpha Slip – The First Three Chapters

A shout-out to the two who always have my back:

Mum and Dad. Taken on a Nikon F3, 100ASA BnW film

I’ve just passed the 20,000 word mark on Alpha Slip, which leaves me torn four or five ways at once, because besides Alpha Slip…

I’ve got 35k done on the novel Century of Sand,
Weathermen is in need of a final draft (110k),
Untitled novel about aliens in a funfair is itching for a proper 2nd draft (100k),
and there are three short stories in 2nd draft stage that need about three days each to be polished into a finished, saleable state.

I write a lot, see. I have a regime that doesn’t take kindly to being ignored. Every day is a writing day, and I’m never short of a project. I have too much work for the free hours of my day – sometimes I think that even if I was a full-time writer I’d still be begging for extra hours.

I didn’t get into this habit by chance or by luck. I did it because there are people that believe in me and push me.

So, here’s a shout-out to my parents. They read everything I write (even the rude bits) and they are infallibly honest in their assessment of my work. They also knew I was a writer long before I knew it myself, and they’ve always supported me on the journey. Hopefully, before too long, I can put a properly published novel into their hands with my name on it. Their names will be #1 on the page of dedications.

Thanks, Mum. Thanks, Dad. You’re tops.