Gillian Polack's Blog, page 303

gillpolack @ 2010-07-31T21:01:00

I've just spent a perfect afternoon with friends. Geekdom central, we were, with historical recipes of various sorts on the table and Peter Jackson 'exploring' the history of NZ film on the TV. I've handed over material for the Conflux cookbook to Nick and all 3 of my big immediate deadlines have been met. Llyn and I are celebrating with a rather foodie morning tomorrow.

This morning was also foodie, with a market visit. And rather geekish, with a Spanish SF film which I didn't know I neede...

gillpolack @ 2010-07-30T10:29:00

This morning is my morning for catching up on things. Most of them are pretty mundane (like phoning the real estate agent to try to find a solution to two long-standing problems - no luck today, but they're listening at least) but this post by Anna Tambour is interesting. Things written by Anna Tambour generally are interesting, but this one is interesting in a foodie way. I'll leave you to read that, while I return to the charm of mundanity. Given that my next mundane task is probably ...

gillpolack @ 2010-07-29T21:57:00

Kaaron Warren's just done a gorgeous interview of Monica Carroll (with pictures!) about her story for Baggage. Monica's story is a whole bunch of things, and one of them is a story of place. I love the way Kaaron and Monica unfold the sense of place, as if it were papers, layered in an archive: http://kaaronwarren.wordpress.com/2010/07/29/baggage-author/ it's like a picture that shows more and more detail, the further in one goes.

gillpolack @ 2010-07-29T19:07:00

I decided to take a newsbreak and I turned the television on for the news and found that a major headline is a bunch of politicans claiming, sequentially, that Kevin Rudd is an honourable man. I don't know if I find it consoling or worrying when politicans appear to be referring to Shakespeare to describe a recently unseated leader.

Baggage reviews

Elizabeth's kindly done a round up of the early reviews for Baggage: http://www.eneitpress.com/blog.php?journal=1

And I have a completed first draft of Aaargh! going up to its first committee (I think it only needs two sets of approvals from here on in).

The natural consequence of all this is that tomorrow is cookbook day. Truly. There is complete logic in there. I might try to catch up on some other stuff as well, though. I need to reduce my "Have to read and possibly write about before ...

gillpolack @ 2010-07-28T17:36:00

Characterisation is something I have on my mind, thanks to Ian McHugh. He keeps mentioning it in my vicinity.

Because it's on my mind, and because teaching started today, naturally I taught my class a couple of tricks for creating instant character recognition for readers using dialogue. The explanation unmelted their brains (which had been frostbound to that moment, which was odd, because today is rather mild) but it didn't get much dialogue written. We've been doing so much description r...

gillpolack @ 2010-07-27T19:58:00

I got so much done today that I'm a bit lost right now. My lists didn't quite carry me far enough. I've put dinner on, and when it's ready, I'm going to take a dinner break. At that point I shall make a new list. I shall brave the unknown future, armed with newness and to-doness and courage.

Catching up a bit means that maybe I will actually be able to do everything I need to do before Friday, which is definitely a good thing. A complete printout of the stuff Nick needs on Saturdy, for ins...

Baggage is part of Life: Simon Brown introduces his story

The heading makes it sound as if there's a 30 book series where speculative fiction writers deal with big issues. That'd be cool, wouldn't it? Not thirty volumes, but a few, anyhow, looking at all sorts of aspects of life and culture and country in ways that challenge. Cultural baggage is all you get from me, and that only from an Australian direction.

Tonight the Baggage post is from Simon Brown. I asked him some questions and he wrote me a seamless answer, so I dumped the questions and...

gillpolack @ 2010-07-26T13:31:00

Announcement time!

First of all, the launch of Baggage: http://www.eneitpress.com/news.php (we'll make sure that the formal parts of it are over in time so that everyone can attend the Opening Ceremony of AussieCon).

And then there's the Australian Spec Fic blog carnival: http://www.horrorscope.com.au/2010/07/australian-speculative-fiction-blog.html

And my new piece for Bibliobuffet: http://www.bibliobuffet.com/bookish-dreaming

There are several reviews of Baggage out. Elizabeth's going to put...

rare political post

The Australian election debate was one of the dullest I've seen. I'm beginning to understand why the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition agreed on a change of time, ceding to Masterchef. Mind you, the number of times "Fair Dinkum" was used about doubles its usage nationally over the last month.

What I find interesting about this election is the underlying sexism. The Wonderful Worldwide Web tells me that some channels had pink and blue worms, for audience opinions, instead of the...