Joshua Donellan's Blog: JM Donellan's substack, page 9

The Eternal sneak preview #2

One of the best things about making art in the 21st century is that distance is no barrier to collaboration. Today Tony Gilfoyle and I have been hard at work on our new project, me tapping away at my keyboard in a little cafe in Brisbane, Tony furiously sketching in the Solomon islands.

I am so excited about this project that I want to high five the sun. It’s going to have the widest scope of anything I’ve ever written, spanning centuries and continents, heaven and hell, life and death. Tony’s art is going make these characters so real you might want to wear kevlar while you read it just in case you catch a stray bullet flying out from the pages.

 

 

I know I’m getting ahead of myself sharing these images so early in the creative process – but hell, I’m a writer. Getting ahead of myself is what I do. I’m currently waist deep in research covering subjects ranging from Gnosticism, Sufism, the Colombian revolution, the Khmer Rouge, Icelandic volcanoes, obscure mathematical theories and pancultural symbolism. Enjoy these teaser sketches. And If someone could provide me with an image of an Indian rupee from the early 18th century that’d be just swell.

 

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 Growing pains.  Interim parliament vows to keep Australia 'one nation under a groove'  Literally the ugliest thing ever built in all of human history  day one.  "Look ma, I got a book deal!"Copyright © JM Donellan [The Eternal sneak preview #2], All Right Reserved. 2014.

The Stench of Adventure

 

I’m awfully fond of days when I get to hold a new book in my hands. I’m even more fond of the days when the book in question has my name on the cover. [untitled] #6 is one such book, and also features a bunch of other fantastic writers from around the country. I got a free copy in the mail, but that’s only because there’s one of my stories in it. But don’t worry! You can get a copy in the mail too, you just have to pay some ca$h money and it will appear in a manner similar to magic in your letterboxholeslot.

This issue features my story The Stench of Adventure, which is about a strange little incident that happened when I was travelling in Cambodia a few years back. Also features a bunch of other great writers from around the country. Clickety click here to obtain with your dollarbucks.

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 Book giveaway  On Love and Mediocrity.  350 PROJECT  They Will Have Their Way BNE review for rave magazine  PEOPLE (AND OBJECTS) I WOULD RATHER BE THAN DAN BROWNCopyright © JM Donellan [The Stench of Adventure], All Right Reserved. 2014.

Heroes.

My kid brother and I have a tradition of going to see all the superhero movies. We load up on sugary delights and soak up 90 minutes of explosions and musclebound superhumans with our eyes. It’s appropriate that we accompany trashy action films with junk food, because they are essentially junk food for the brain; delicious, but not something you want as a staple diet. In between each trip to the movies I buy him a couple of books and we make a few outings to the library, beach, rainforest or museum. He’s turning fourteen this year, and seeing him standing precipitously on the brink of manhood has made me concerned about the world he’s about to inherit. As if the usual cavalcade of teenage catastrophes wasn’t enough – carbuncular colonisations, hormones roundhousing him 24/7, voice cracking and breaking like a collapsing shelf of ikea glasses – he’s also got to deal with the tremendous, steaming mountain of bullshit that we are going to leave his generation to clean up. And the locus of this monstrous mess is a prevailing  association of aggression with ‘strength’ and a refusal to engage in rational debate as a sign of ‘toughness.’

“You talkin’ to me? Oh I’m sorry you weren’t? My mistake, terribly sorry please enjoy your evening. Thank goodness we didn’t let that escalate unnecessarily!”

Two weeks ago I was on my way home from seeing one of the greatest bands in the country right now, Blank Realm, and I had to sprint to avoid missing the hourly night bus. When I arrived I saw two men, one of them shirtless, calling each other c*nts and arguing with around the same level of intellectual discourse (and roughly the same sized vocabulary) as a couple of four-year-olds quarrelling over a Tonka truck. As I waited anxiously for the bus to arrive, the shirtless antagonist fired one last blast of expletive-laden vitriol at his companion before smashing his fist into the glass of the bus shelter. A cacophonic explosion of glass ruptured the air around me as he walked off into the night, knuckles trailing a red river in his wake.

Recently our Prime Minister described the prevalence of alcohol-fuelled violence such as this as well as more heinous actions like coward punches as ‘appalling’ and ‘utterly cowardly’, and so he should. Meanwhile, his own administration last week witnessed an incident of violence where a man in their care was killed and 77 others injured. Where is the public declaration of disgust, the contempt for the perpetuation of these abhorrent conditions? Instead we see the exact opposite, Abbott most recently describing immigration minister Scott Morrison as ‘strong.’  In the words of Inigo Montoya:

People who overcome addiction are strong. People who stand up to injustice are strong. People who can watch Tony Abbott’s face spewing inarticulate dross for more than 20 seconds are zen masters with the strength of ten tigers. Morrison, meanwhile, continues to maintain operations in a manner that have been described by the UN as ‘cruel, inhuman, degrading and in violation of international law.’ History will judge Morrison a monster, meanwhile our elected leader describes him as ‘strong’, ‘decent’ and ‘no wimp.’

I don’t want my brother growing up in a culture where strength is associated with violence and oppression. I don’t want him growing up in a culture where rationalism, compassion and emotional intelligence are equated with weakness and abnormality. I don’t know how to fix this, but I know that the hordes of people who struggle to end Australia’s abuse of asylum seekers, the lawyers, activists, protestors, writers, journalists and  everyday people who continue to speak out against this malicious injustice, these are the kinds of people who show true strength. These are the people I hope he regards as heroes.

 

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 Quotes    If loving you is wrong, I'd like to be partially incorrect.  PROMETHEUS VS PROGENY  Love letters to corporations episode #6Copyright © JM Donellan [Heroes. ], All Right Reserved. 2014.

We Are All Ghosts wants your love (in the form of money).

 

Dearest humans and sophisticated AI programs who sound like Scarlett Johansson, our brand new production We Are All Ghosts has been cast and is in the early stages of preparation for the Anywhere Theatre Festival. We are so excited that we made a robot that shoots fireworks out of its eyes and cupcakes from its mouth to celebrate.*

However, putting on a play – even a made up one about fictional characters – frustratingly costs real earth dollars. Believe me, I try to pay for my groceries with imaginary money all the time and it never works. So we need a little help from our friends and their friends and people who aren’t our friends yet but most certainly will be as soon as they help us.

We’ve put together a crowdfunding campaign to cover the basics like insurance, props, registration fees, police bribes etc. Anything you can give would be hugely appreciated. Plus we’ll give you loads of magical things in return like drinks and personalised poems and tickets to the show and such. For each dollar you give a puppy makes best friends with a baby seal and they start a band together where they just sing about how great you are all day long.

Here’s a picture of Jess as Selina looking at you with pleading puppy dog eyes asking you to donate generously. She can see your future in that disco ball, don’t make her sad!

photo by Dave Clarkey

*This is not true. Such robots do not exist, and in a nation where we don’t even have a science minister they are unlikely to be developed in the near future.

 

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 STUPID WEIGHTS MACHINE FOR JERKS  Dear vending machine in the emergency ward at the Royal Brisbane hospital: I hate you.  100 books a year    DYING IN DIGITALCopyright © JM Donellan [We Are All Ghosts wants your love (in the form of money). ], All Right Reserved. 2014.

The Eternal sneak preview #1

I’ll be the first to admit that I have a bad habit of counting my dragons before they’ve hatched. I tend to exuberantly rant about a new idea that’s spawned in my mind the minute it presents itself and start making business and marketing plans for books before I’ve even finished the second chapter. However, with this new project I won’t even attempt to restrain myself from shouting from the digital rooftops. I’m only going to throw you a couple of teaser sketches for the moment as this project is still in the early planning stages, but I will tell you that I’ve commenced work on an epic fantasy graphic novel series that spans several centuries. The series will be a collaboration with the ludicrous and luminary Tony Gilfoyle.

Tony is currently based in a secret location on an island somewhere in the Pacific (that’s actually true, more or less) but he recently emailed me these images and I couldn’t wait to throw them at the internet. I’ll show you a couple more preview images sometime soon. Keep watching this space and definitely check out Tony’s instagram page and art blog.

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 A BOOK. ITS COVER.  Book giveaway    Love Letter to Lisbon (OR Art in the Time of Recession).  Jerks vs. the internetCopyright © JM Donellan [The Eternal sneak preview #1], All Right Reserved. 2014.

Campbell: The Shocking True Story of a ‘Man’ Who Hated The Arts So Much You’d Think An Artist Stabbed His Puppy As Part of an Abstract Performance Piece

Dear Campbell,

Having just read the news that the Queensland Theatre Company censored a joke at your expense due to concerns that it might affect their funding, I thought I’d let you know that I’ve been inspired to write a play about your life. The current working title is Campbell: The Shocking True Story of a ‘Man’ Who Hated The Arts So Much You’d Think An Artist Stabbed His Puppy As Part of an Abstract Performance Piece.

Sources say the joke was in the form of a limerick that began ’There was a Premier who would grunt …’

QTC’s decision is a harsh reminder of the culture of fear and anti-art sentiment that your government has fostered. After all, not every arts body can have a key member married to one of your senior advisors thus securing themselves $3.3 million in funding now can they? And you certainly fired one hell of an opening salvo when your first act as Premier was to cut the Literary Awards during the National Year of Reading FOR WHICH YOU WERE AN AMBASSADOR. This was basically like PETA signing up a new spokesperson who then decides to turn up to a press conference wearing a coat made out of Snow Leopard skin whilst munching on a burger made from the flesh of the last black rhino.

On a related note, your government appears to be aggressively anti-youth crime, as though you perceive Queensland to have a lawlessness problem roughly on par with New York in the early 90s. Your recent suggested changes to youth sentencing policy were in fact so abhorrent that they attracted a petition from Amnesty International. Try dropping our crime stats on someone from the southside of LA sometime and see how that goes down, I’d wager you’d get a fairly enlightening new perspective on things via a couple of knuckle sandwiches. If you read any literature on the subject, ever, you would know that the most effective ways to lower youth crime rates are to fund education and youth arts/recreation programs.

The fact that your government recently placed the Phillips Group PR company on retainer for tens of thousands of dollars per month implies that you are finally getting the message that many of your government’s policies have been unpopular and that you need to find ways to gain favour with the public. HOT TIP: Taxpayers don’t usually love having their taxpayer dollars spent on overpriced spin doctors telling them that their tax dollars are being spent correctly. Especially when you are firing and cutting like some kind of pyromaniac slasher from a B-grade horror movie ostensibly in the name of reducing debt. Furthermore, if it has finally dawned on you that this is in fact a democracy and not a dictatorship, it might be wise not to anger people with highly developed communication skills and devoted audiences. Like artists, for example. Like the old saying says; Never kick a hornet’s nest while wearing a kilt.*

I should let you know that the villain in my last novel, Zeb and the Great Ruckus, was loosely inspired by you. In that story the evil Czar outlaws art and exiles artists, thus forcing an artistic insurrection. I’d really hate for that story to become any more prescient than it is already. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to writing Campbell: The Shocking True Story of a ‘Man’ Who Hated The Arts So Much You’d Think An Artist Stabbed His Puppy As Part of an Abstract Performance Piece. I’ll send you an invite to the Premiere, Premier.

 

*I may have just made that up, but it is rather good advice.

 

 

 

 

 

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 They Will Have Their Way BNE review for rave magazine  FROZEN FACE OF POLAR BEAR reviewed by JM Donellan (of Frozen Face of Polar Bear)  UNINSPIRATIONAL QUOTES EPISODE 1  The Price is Free  100 books a yearCopyright © JM Donellan [Campbell: The Shocking True Story of a ‘Man’ Who Hated The Arts So Much You’d Think An Artist Stabbed His Puppy As Part of an Abstract Performance Piece], All Right Reserved. 2014.

We Are All Ghosts audition callout

After many years writing novels & stories & articles & poetry & angry letters to politicians & graffiti on toilet walls I’ve finally written my first play. It’s called We Are All Ghosts and it will be part of the Anywhere Theatre Festival, which is one of the most magnificent arts festivals in the entire world. We Are All Ghosts is a melancholy and mischievous exploration of friendship, loss, love, life and the afterlife.

We’re currently holding auditions for 1 male and 2 female actors with a playing age of late 20s/early 30s. If you’re in Brisbane aka Brisvakistan aka Risky Brisness and you’re interested in being part of the magic download the audition brief here:

We Are All Ghosts audition callout

If you would rather do a video audition for the new Star Wars movies click here.

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 #BWF13  STUPID WEIGHTS MACHINE FOR JERKS  They Will Have Their Way BNE review for rave magazine  ART, FICTION, FASHIONISTAS  100 Stories for QLDCopyright © JM Donellan [We Are All Ghosts audition callout ], All Right Reserved. 2014.

Reduce Translink fares: 3600 signatures and counting…

SIGN HERE

Brisbane’s public transport prices are now the most expensive in Australia and among the highest in the world.

High prices are causing more people to choose to drive instead of using public transport thus increasing traffic, pollution and potentially raising the number of drunk drivers on the road.

Lowering the cost of living was a core election promise of the Newman government and one of the easiest and most direct ways to do this would be to reduce public transport costs.

The recently implemented ‘reduced’ fare increase and free travel after 9 trips are vastly inadequate half-measures. We request that Mr Emerson and his department urgently consider the following:

- Significantly reduced fares 

- Daily and/or monthly caps 

- Discounts for Health Care cardholders

- A review of the current zoning 

More information:

 

 Brisbane Times article

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 The String Bridge is a thing that you should acquire post-haste.  Interview with Jo Nesbo  IT'S THE INAUGURAL SUPER MAGICAL XMAS TIME EXPLOSIONS AND FUNTIMES SALE!!!    Love Letter To Brisbane pt 1: Books & BarsCopyright © JM Donellan [Reduce Translink fares: 3600 signatures and counting...], All Right Reserved. 2014.

A poem for Christopher Pyne

Christopher Pyne, you’ve got me pining for a time

When we had an education minister with half a mind

You stick to your area of expertise, I’ll stick to mine

If you need an expert on education,

a phone call my way would be well worth your while

If I need an expert on being a smarmy entitled prick,

I’ll keep you on speed dial.

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 A story, an experiment.    Can you hate the artist but love their art?  Editing advice.  7 Best Writing AlbumsCopyright © JM Donellan [A poem for Christopher Pyne], All Right Reserved. 2014.

XMAS BOOKS.

The good thing about buying books as Xmas gifts is that you can write in the front of them and it saves you buying a card. This means that not only do you save on money and paper wastage, but many years from now when you and the person you gave the book to are both very, extremely dead some first year literature student will stumble on the copy of the book you gifted amongst the labyrinthine shelves of a charming secondhand bookstore run by an old man with weird glasses and a funny sneeze.

The student will read the little message you wrote to your loved one and say ‘How cute!’ and think about how both the giver and recipient are both dead and how they lived in a time when Australia didn’t even have a science minister and they treated refugees like war criminals and then they will jump on their hoverboard, blast some technoblues through their soundsphere and disappear into the sunset with a smile on their face.

 

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 OPEN LETTER TO THE CREEPY GUY ACROSS THE ROAD  New York Limes best smelling author  BP: A disaster in cartoon form.  A story, an experiment.  Dearest Ministers of Education: please buy 2 million copies of Zeb and the Great Ruckus. Copyright © JM Donellan [XMAS BOOKS.], All Right Reserved. 2013.