Deborah Kalin's Blog, page 36

i can see my future, and there are edits in it

Today I have exceedingly good news: I have sold a story to ASIM. Tentative publication date is April 2010.

For those playing along at home, I wrote the first draft of this story in January 2005, during my stint at Clarion. (Actually, since it was my week one story, I probably started it, in some brief and jotted form at least, in late December 2004.) I can't remember what I called it at the time (probably something genius like "Untitled"), but it's since acquired the title "Shaping Lily".

The stor

i hate to say it, but you're perfect together

Tactic: set the alarm clock for five minutes later. More sleep!

The world's answering gambit: garbage trucks. Ten minutes earlier. Ugh.

World: 1, Deb: 0.

Bit of a slow effort, writing last night, because I got distracted by playing with Scrivener. I suppose I could argue that I didn't get entirely distracted and skip writing altogether, and it would be a true argument, but a weakish one nonetheless. Bad author. No biscuit. No wonder the world sent me garbage trucks this morning by way of punishment

i'm going back to the start…

I woke up off-colour yesterday, and felt too sick to do much of anything…so I cranked up Scrivener (at long last) and tried to figure out whether it would work for me.

I'm still undecided. I suspect I erred in attempting to discover how it works while in the middle of a novel, rather than starting fresh. I transferred most of the text of the faerie novel across into a scrivener file, and discovered that Scrivener feels the novel is almost 6,000 words longer than Microsoft Word thinks it is. Inte

look at my life, i'm a lot like you were

Ah, herbal teas. Smell fantastic, taste like … hot water.

Life is full of little disappointments, innit?

simple pleasures should not be underestimated

Yesterday I had lunch at one of those places which is more concerned with their atmosphere than with the provision of food.

You know the places: where the menu contains such exotic items as fillet of atlantic salmon, the fish in question having been nurtured in dark and lightless caverns tucked under the antarctic ice shelf for several years, before being slaughtered and the meat wrapped around a lemon and shot into space and thus lightly seared upon re-entry, and then served upon a bed of, god,

never one when you need one, though, is there?

Tonight's tram ride featured:

:: A passive-aggressive tram driver, who felt the need to rouse on the passengers for attempting to board the tram once it stopped at the tram stop. (Apparently, it hadn't stopped at the right bit of the tram stop to allow boarding. To which I ask: why open the doors then? To catch a breath of the refreshing arctic winds, perhaps?)

:: Ticket inspectors!

:: The passive-aggressive tram driver announcing he wouldn't drive the tram if people insisted on standing in the doo

don't leave your lies outside

I have no food in the house, and no clothes ironed ready for the dayjob tomorrow — but I have vanquished the civilisation which slyly staged a coup over my kitchen sink in my absence, and surely that counts for something.

I have also spent the majority of my evening noodling through Helen Austin's youtube channel — which is a most pleasant way to spend an evening. Highly recommended. She first came to my attention when a friend sent me a link to her Childbirth Song, which happens to be both amusi

mark your calendars

A quick reminder for those of you in or near Newcastle this Saturday (since I'll be jumping a plane tomorrow morning and may forget to blog tomorrow) that I'm doing a signing at the Angus & Robertson at Westfield Kotara, from 11am.

Come and entertain me!

remember what she does when you're asleep

Today, I practiced Not Wanting things.

It worked really well — right up until lunch, when I decidedly did not want what I had brought, but equally did not want to shell out money for something else. QUANDARY. Apathy forced me to eat the lunch I had brought, albeit with much grumbling about the sub-par situation.1

In other news, Tess talks here of her and my participation in the freeze frame project, which I link you to because it's easier than telling the story again myself. The first photo of us

the view from the tram

There's an old man I see on the trams, every couple of weeks or so, has the look of decay about him. Emaciated, with wisps of papery hair clinging to the back of his grey-skinned scalp, ears grown too large for his frame, and eyes sinking into their sockets. The flesh of his eye sockets is so heavy, so ancient and stretched, that they sag open, revealing their raw pink interior, in stark contrast with the yellowed eyes above, like a basset hound caught in the pallid grey throes of chemotherapy.

H