Deborah Kalin's Blog, page 33

but two miles more and then we rest!

News from the powers that be at Allen & Unwin is that the publication date of Pledged, aka Matilde #2, aka the sequel to Shadow Queen, aka That Book I Have Been Studiously Pretending Does Not Exist, will now be May 2010, not March 2010.

There's a few reasons for the change in schedule, not least of which is that my editor would like to edit the book herself rather than delegate. Truthfully, I'm happy about the change.

Yes, I know it means the book is coming out later, and you all have to wait ...

you had and lost the one thing you kept in a safe place

The triptych window in my living room gives me a view of the sky, glancingly pinned to the earth at the bottom of the frame by an apartment block rooftop and the sparse canopy of a nearby gum tree. I forget, sometimes (because when I'm home it's mostly at night and the blind is invariably down) just how perfect it is to lie back and watch the clouds slip on by.

Right now, I'm watching the thick, grey rain clouds draw across the sky, marching the last of the day's light away. There's one...

are you two sisters? nah, you are, aren't you?

As a public service announcement to all the blokes:1 asking a girl standing at the taxi rank "Where's home, though? I might be able to help you" is not (however much it might seem like it at the time) a particularly endearing way to earn said girl's trust. At best she's going to assume you're drunk and therefore largely useless to her, but either way, the very first thing she's going to do is cast a quick eye over you to see if you're an immediate physical threat. You won't see her glance...

she packs her hopes and dreams like a refugee

Stuff I learnt this week:

Pompeii had some entertaining graffiti on its walls. (Apparently Thracius makes the girls moan — but watch out for Atimetus, he'll get you pregnant.)
 Although the body casts were a little miserable-making
 Salvador Dali does something with his paintings that makes them glow. I know there's some advantageous lighting happening in a museum, but I suspect even without the tricks those things would be eerily luminescent. Three Young Surrealist Women holding in their arms...

fuge, dammit

Did you know that Latin has a supine verb form?1

I can only postulate that it is a verb form devoted solely to a) lying down and b) the various ways of accomplishing or maintaining (or imposing) such a position.

(This sounds most excellent to me.)

Alternatively, perhaps it is the verb form used to imply that the poor Roman in question, exhausted by the process of trying to conjugate his verbs and decide which particular form fits the current situation, has been rendered cerebrally unfit for...

i'm totally doing that again. stat.

I have lived through the apocalypse.

Somewhat surprisingly, given all the various visions of the future which storytellers have imagined over the years, it featured nachos1, and two-thirds of the first season of Arrested Development.

It. Was. Awesome.

(Next time, it'll feature boysenberry ice cream. )

so. much. nachos. I am still not hungry.

your grammatical tics, they drive me crazy

Every morning, on the way to work, I pass the "Grate Cafe".1

Their sign promises Grate Food, Grate Coffee, Grate Catering, and I CAN'T STAND THEM FOR THAT SIGN. I don't care whether it's deliberate2 or a genuine mistake.

Grate coffee? Unless it's made from grated coffee beans, I don't think so. For that matter, I'm pretty sure grating isn't the right way to treat coffee beans, so even if it is made from grated coffee beans…I don't think so. And if we're following that theme, then grate food...

for your consideration, the examiner notes the following…

Did you know that Acts are so impossible to untangle that there is an entire Act dedicated solely to their interpretation?

It's called, funnily enough, the Acts Interpretation Act, and is basically a list of rules about how to decipher the concrete meaning hiding beneath the impenetrable mound of clauses, annotations, and circular references that constitute an Act.

The only problem being that the Acts Interpretation Act is written in the same style as any other Act — and its wording is...

jeebus, it's sunday night already?

Yo, Melbourne peeps: if you're looking for a signed copy of Shadow Queen, I stopped into the Dymocks on Collins street yesterday and signed their stock for them, so that's the place to go.

(I also stopped into the Reader's Feast, but I did not sign their copies because the bookstore clerk, while perfectly polite, greeted my offer with a wild-eyed expression that would have equally suited a suggestion to pour petrol on their stock and set the store alight.) (Poor bookstore clerk, I shouldn't p...

what's there to decide? and what's there to say?

Yesterday at the dayjob, sitting through a seminar on government programs to support innovation, and the presenter comes out with this:

"In this job, I've learnt that everyone in Australia has either written a novel, or invented something."

— and every head in the room swivelled my way, my dayjob colleagues laughing, the presenter following the direction of their gazes a beat later with mystification on his face. I guess his joke had never gone down quite so pointedly before.

I of course...