Peter Macinnis's Blog, page 2
May 18, 2010
Monsters taking shape
I have created two Scottish tribes of spaghetti, the Macaronis who like fine garments and the Machiavellis who wear minimal clothing. Those cruel Macaronis have dubbed the Machiavellis "The We Freeze" and claim that they measure their temperature in degrees Calvin.
Apparently the two tribes are always fooding with each other. Their preferred weapons wormy jelly and land minestrones. That Louis Pasta has a lot to answer for.
I was brought up in a strictly contrapuntal house, which meant that playing with words was just as much anathema as playing with your food.
Well, I seem to have managed to lick that one!
Apparently the two tribes are always fooding with each other. Their preferred weapons wormy jelly and land minestrones. That Louis Pasta has a lot to answer for.
I was brought up in a strictly contrapuntal house, which meant that playing with words was just as much anathema as playing with your food.
Well, I seem to have managed to lick that one!
April 29, 2010
Slow and steady wins the race
I'm just cruising. The gold project is going well, but it still lacks a direction. For about four and a half years now, I have been scheming to do a series of YA historical fiction, drawing on the areas in which I have particular strength: maritime history, Australian history, especially on migration, settlement and exploration (and my recent work has added the gold rush era to that), plus 19th century science and technology, including rockets and explosives.
The challenge will be to do the content lightly, so that I don't write a po-faced didactic diatribe.
I sat in a Parliamentary committee of enquiry yesterday, and in the space of 15 minutes, carved my original too-ambitious plan for eight books down to a more solid four books.
The idea makes me want to dance, and that may mean that gold gets shoved back, yet again. Although two of the planned books involve gold in some way.
I'm still trying to work out how to take the hero to Kefallonia, which in his time, was a British possession. If I can make that work, guess where I'll be forced to go and pig out on choriatiki in September, as the holiday season winds down!
The challenge will be to do the content lightly, so that I don't write a po-faced didactic diatribe.
I sat in a Parliamentary committee of enquiry yesterday, and in the space of 15 minutes, carved my original too-ambitious plan for eight books down to a more solid four books.
The idea makes me want to dance, and that may mean that gold gets shoved back, yet again. Although two of the planned books involve gold in some way.
I'm still trying to work out how to take the hero to Kefallonia, which in his time, was a British possession. If I can make that work, guess where I'll be forced to go and pig out on choriatiki in September, as the holiday season winds down!
April 4, 2010
Clean air for a bit
It's been a fairly hectic seven months. I have researched and written a book for the 10-14 age group called Australian Backyard Naturalist, illustrating at each point with photos of home-made apparatus or the life forms in question.
I'm sort of a naturalist by training, but I haven;t written in the area for 25 years. The National Library of Australia asked me to do a sequel for Australian Backyard Explorer which was shortlisted this week for the Children's Book Council of Australia Eve Pownall award, so I was pretty chuffed when the first one paid off.
The second one has been a lot of work, but I had lots of fun.
There's another children's book in production (it's about monsters), but now I'm going hammer and tongs on a serious interest: the hunger for gold, the madness, the harm and other effects that gold has engendered. There's a lot of hilarious science and other stuff to be told there, but now I'm going more quietly.
I'm sort of a naturalist by training, but I haven;t written in the area for 25 years. The National Library of Australia asked me to do a sequel for Australian Backyard Explorer which was shortlisted this week for the Children's Book Council of Australia Eve Pownall award, so I was pretty chuffed when the first one paid off.
The second one has been a lot of work, but I had lots of fun.
There's another children's book in production (it's about monsters), but now I'm going hammer and tongs on a serious interest: the hunger for gold, the madness, the harm and other effects that gold has engendered. There's a lot of hilarious science and other stuff to be told there, but now I'm going more quietly.
