Gillian Polack's Blog, page 304

gillpolack @ 2010-07-25T01:28:00

Today I've read three books, written an article and a half and edited another and sorted out more historic cookery. I was going to take time off and watch a DVD, but it had one of those lock things on it and I have no idea how to open it. I've also played with starmaps, thanks to Lara, and thought much about eclipses in 1305. I might also have sent my long-sufferring supervisor the latest draft of Aargh!

It wasn't till just now, though, that I looked at my to-do list and realised that most o...

gillpolack @ 2010-07-23T22:01:00

May I say that the AussieCon committee totally rocks. Just in case you were wondering.

gillpolack @ 2010-07-23T19:13:00

Did I forget to blog yesterday? How remiss of me. My excuse is that I'm a tad busy. Just a tad. No more than usual, really, except there are deadlines looming and the nearer they loom the more I seem to spend hours and hours on bibliographies. It's a mystical connection.

What's happening in my life besides forms and bibliographies? Well, the final proofs of Baggage have been sighted by the publisher and we have our third review for it (in Fantasy Magazine - woot!).

Anything else? Not re...

gillpolack @ 2010-07-21T16:59:00

Dinner tonight is fated, I tell you. First I put water on with no rice in it, then I didn't actually remember to turn any knobs. Without knobs turned, the stove doens't know to heat up. Just as well I started early...

Election Night in Canberra

I thought the National Tally Room was going to be closed down, last election, but I've just been told it will be open - which is a good thing, because it's a strange and wonderful place to be on Election Night. Does anyone in Canberra (or able to get to Canberra) want to go to the National Tally Room with me and hang around there for a bit on August 21?

We could go there early (impossible to avoid the crowds, but it would be good to avoid the super-big crowds) and then come back to my plac...

gillpolack @ 2010-07-20T16:21:00

I've done a surprising amount of useful things today and I'm only halfway through my workday. I still want to just moon, but I now I have 2 types of 19th century snackfood, some for tonight some - if it survives that long - for the CSFG meeting tomorrow.

One of them I've been planning for a long time. I want to know the range of dishes I can replace ginger with galingale. I have a gingernut cake that tastes very gingernutty and has no ginger in it: galingale, allspice and cinnamon only. ...

gillpolack @ 2010-07-20T12:53:00

I look at my vast list of things to do and I look at the lingering virus I have and I wonder. I'm not sure what I wonder, to be honest. I wonder that, too.

Another bit of Baggage: Deborah Biancotti

I'm a good person - I make writers introduce themselves, as I did here.  It stretches their tolerances, but much less than if I had begun this interview with "Deborah Biancotti is known for her strong committment to murdering masses.  When not in church..." In fact, I have no idea if Deborah has even participated in a mass, much less murdered it, so it really is just as well I'm not introducing her.

What do readers most need to know about you?

I asked a few friends to help me answer this. A...

gillpolack @ 2010-07-19T12:53:00

I keep finding reasons to read fanzines. My latest (warning: it's a big file) is that someone who has impeccable taste (it must be impeccable, since it agrees with mine most of the time) has gone through a bunch of past Hugo winners and assessed them with the benefit of seeing them in sequence, over time. The comments are worth reading, but what I really loved were the old covers.

I'm not going to tell you which article was the one I agreed with most of the time. That would spoil half the...

gillpolack @ 2010-07-19T00:17:00

I'm torn between working and watching Alfred Hitchcock's "The Trouble with Harry." Hitchcock is winning by a country mile. I keep forgetting that Hitchcock made charming films. Everyone talks about him as the master of suspense, but so many of his movies have a nice feeling to the characters. Or at least, to the characters we're supposed to care about.

Does charming suspense work better than tough suspense?