For those who are interested…

Posted on by March 13, 2021
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…there was a straw vote (i.e. official but non-binding) on the Director General post at the UN International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

You may remember in the last round of voting there were 2 candidates from Japan and South Africa respectively. In order to win, the candidate has to gain 24 votes, or two thirds of the Board. The Japanese candidate gained 23, there was one abstention and 11 went to the South African.

In the straw vote yesterday, there were additional candidates – people from Slovenia, Belgian and Spain. The Slovenian and the Belgian did not win any votes. The Spaniard gained 4, the Japanese 20 and the South African still had 11.

15 countries are not too happy with Japan, obviously, but not all of them are keen on the lone developing nation candidate. I wonder if the real vote – on July 2nd – is going to be an impasse.

The best solution? A compromise candidate like my husband. (OK, I would say that, wouldn’t I? But that is not going to happen, because Malaysian pledged its vote to Japan for reasons I am sure you can guess. I suspect – a personal assessment as I have no insider info! – that many other developing nations did exactly the same thing.)

Watch this space for the next exciting episode…

What happens when a writer takes a break

Posted on by March 13, 2021
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I have not exactly been keeping up with the blogging very well. I am not at my computer as much lately. I intend to start writing book 3 of The Watergivers trilogy (i.e. the Stormlord cycle) on July 1st and maintain a steady 11,000 words a week for 4 months, which should bring me to the end of the first draft in time for revisions and a January 1st delivery. Maybe. Unless, of course, I do other unscheduled stuff like fall sick…

I guess losing one’s other job has an up side: more time for writing!

Right now, I am not writing at all – I am socialising to make up for being unsociable for so long, and I am house-cleaning, to make up for…you don’t want to know.

You know what? House-cleaning is a remarkably solitary occupation. I wonder why.

Pix from here.

Kids. They are never dull.

Posted on by March 13, 2021
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Did you know that the sale and use of marijuana is legal for medical purposes in California?

One of the things my musician daughter does for a living is to DJ where she lives in LA. She plays all kinds of venues, including a surprising number of retail outlets – clothes, shoes etc. And often they prefer to pay in kind, at least in part. Which, depending on the store, is usually fine. (You can see where this is going, can’t you?)

Photo: at one of her other DJ gigs. Details on the photo – click to enlarge

The other day she rang up a place that wanted a DJ for their public opening on Melrose, Hollywood, a street known for its boutiques and restaurants and coffee shops. They were interested and asked if she would mind barter for payment.

Thinking clothes, daughter says, yeah, sure, that’d be fine.

“Do you have a doctor’s prescription?” the guy on the phone asks.

Wondering what sort of place requires a doctor’s prescription for its clothes, she asks carefully, “Er…prescription?”

Turns out that it is a pot shop.

“Don’t worry,” daughter assures me blithely. “I negotiated to be paid in drug money instead.”

How to succeed as a writer

Posted on by March 13, 2021
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Actually, I don’t know.
But I was listening to a TED talk the other day on what makes a successful person, and I reckon what makes a published writer is pretty much the same 8 things as that speaker mentioned:

1. PASSION – don’t do it for money, but for love
2. WORK hard, but let it be fun. (For a writer, that would include reading A LOT)
3. GOOD – get good at it through practice
4. FOCUS – on one thing
5. PUSH yourself and push through the self-doubt
6. SERVE something of value to others
7. Get IDEAS – listen, observe, be curious, ask questions, problem solve, make connections
8. PERSISTENCE through the CRAP Criticism Rejection Arseholes (or assholes if you’re an American) Pressure

And honestly, I don’t think you can get better advice on How To Be a Published Writer than the above. I might question No.4 (for a writer, too much focus on just writing might be too socially limiting for a start), but apart from that, I reckon it’s damn good advice. It certainly applies to how I went about it…

What makes a successful published writer is something else again, and no one knows the answer to that one. If they did, there would never be a book that fails to sell well.

The wrong place at the wrong time.

Posted on by March 13, 2021
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Remember those days when you used to hear – said in all seriousness – that women “asked for it” when they went out alone at night or wore skimpy clothing?

Well, here’s a new variant on the theme, coming from the Melbourne police, or so it was reported in papers here. It seems that Indian men going out at night carrying things like MP3 players or phones are attacked because they are in the wrong place at the wrong time. You know, like travelling home by train at night. Nothing to do with the fact that they are Indian.

Yeah. Tell me another. In fact, just tell me how travelling by public transport can be considered “the wrong place.” Or how being at a party only to be stabbed by gatecrashers is being somewhere “at the wrong time”.

Sorry, Australia. This stinks. Do something about it.

The Sunburnt Country

Posted on by March 13, 2021
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When I was kid, I remember a book I had, written in verse, with delightful drawings, about a farm family in Australia. Now I have idea who wrote or illustrated it; in fact, what I chiefly remember about it is something I accepted absolutely as a child. Instead of having the four seasons in it as per a European or American type book, it had the four seasons à la Australia: flood, bushfire, drought and … finally … a good season when things weren’t flooded, too dry or on fire. Oh, how true that is in so much of farming or station country.

Here are some more photos from my sister Margaret’s trip to Lake Eyre and inland South Australia. As any country-born Ozzie will tell you, there aren’t too many bridges in that part of the world. But there are lots of ravens and some crows. This lot, believe it or not, are fishing. Which is not something they get to do all that often, because the river only runs rarely. Still, once a fisherman, always a fisherman? They were getting fish as long as 15 cm (6″). This is Cooper Creek at Innaminka
And here is Lake Eyre. Margaret said the Lake Eyre Yacht Club were still waiting for the water to arrive – and below you can see the water as a faint blue line on the horizon and the salt was a bit soggy.Note the bay below. Ok, so the water’s a little on the low side as yet. It takes six weeks to get there from where it rained, at about 30 kms a day, and the lake was still filling up when my sister was there. When it is so shallow, a shift in the wind can send all the water to one side and leave miles of mud exposed…
Usually it fills up only about once in 50 years or so, when it can be 4 metres deep (14′). And it is a tad on the large size. Almost 9000 sq.kms. That’s 3,400 sq miles. Once full, it takes years to dry up again. The water doesn’t run out. This is below sea level and there is nowhere to go.
Just look at those cloudless skies.

They spent a night camped on a channel of the Warburton River at Cowarie station (in cattle country, Australia has stations, not ranches) where the water was moving at 20 knots. There’s a really interesting video about what the water means to the station owner – a woman – here:

http://www.abc.net.au/landline/content/2008/s2579272.htm

Guess what and where?

Posted on by March 13, 2021
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Click to enlarge.
Here’s a photo. Can you name what and where?

Here are some clues.

It’s recent – within the last month.
It’s in Australia (taken by my sister on her perambulations)
It portrays something that doesn’t happen very often.

No prizes for the correct answer, just a pat on the back.

Next post will be the second part on writing a fantasy novel for beginners.

A day in the life of…

Posted on by March 13, 2021
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Catch up housework day. On the lounge room spring clean. Discovered two enormous lizards behind one of the bookcases (after I’d emptied and moved the bookcase.) Not the usual wall geckoes, but the Spotted Gecko that makes messes that you don’t want to know about. Dunno what on earth they find to eat there. Also discovered that one bookcase was ruined underneath in the waterfall flood (aka roof leak) a couple of months back when I was raptor watching.

Then postman came and brought 2 copies of a new print run of The Aware. Yay! (this by the way is the time-honoured way of finding out that your book has gone to reprint – when you receive copies.) Now as I was only told about the last reprint back in February, I am really chuffed! And even better – they have done the cover with a lovely shiny finish instead of the matt one they used before. Oooo, nice. Love you, Voyager Oz!

If you look carefully at the photos of the book above, you will see they aren’t quite the same. The one on the left is the old version(s), and the one on the right is the new version. It is so spiffy! Shiny cover like a duck’s back that does justice to the lovely Jeff Bridges cover, whiter paper and although it has the same number of pages, it it more compact (see the thickness difference?). Wow. Wonder what I did to deserve that. But it’s just lovely that this book, published in 2003, is still selling so well.

If you like urban fantasy and Hong Kong you’ll love this movie…

Posted on by March 13, 2021
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We went to see the movie “Push” starring Dakota Fanning and Chris Evans, today. Basically I went because I know the director, Paul McGuigan – and I’m glad I went.

I note from some of the reviews that many people found the plot confusing. I’m not sure why – as a SFF fan, I recognise it as an urban paranormal story with its own twists, and if that’s what you like reading, you won’t find it confusing. If you’re a fan of the gritty style of say, Jim Butcher’s The Dresden Files, then go and see this.

Paul matched his direction and the camerawork and the tough side of Hong Kong to the grittiness of the story, dodging all those usual touristy panoramas of Hong Kong and the harbour. (The panoramas are there, they are just – thank goodness – not the pretty-pretty ones that you usually see ad nauseum.) I came away with a great respect for Paul’s ability.

Fanning was fabulous, playing a sassy 13-year-old dealing with very adult problems – her mother is a prisoner and she herself sees the future, including her own imminent death, not the easiest of things to cope with when you are barely into your teens. Small wonder then that her mantle of teenage smart-ass bravado occasionally wobbles under the strain. Her relationship with the film’s hero played by Evans – who has his own set of problems – is the centre of the movie as they strive to change the future. I loved the final last twist at the end (after you think the tale is finished!).

Basically it’s a story of psychics – bad guys and good guys – set in Hong Kong. It’s a gangster sf movie. And it has some really neat stuff, including one of the coolest gunfights I’ve ever seen. The fight sequences are much grittier and more realistic than those beautifully choreographed totally unreal dances in the Matrix, yet along similar lines.

And oh, two things. I’ve always wondered what would happen if you pulled the key bits out of one of those edifices of multi-storeyed bamboo scaffolding you find in this part of the world; and I’ve also wondered what would happen if the glass broke on those huge fish tanks they have in seafood restaurants in this part of the world.

Now I know.

Director Paul McGuigan PUSH Exclusive

Pix from here.