Gillian Polack's Blog, page 41

gillpolack @ 2015-02-20T15:19:00

Bad typing day, thanks to air pressure (from the evil, vile stuff up north) and it leads to very interesting typos. I looked at a message I'd sent and discovered that I have a lie not a life, for instance.

it would be more amusing if my next four hours weren't all about typing. I should take a break and do my messages, but my neighbour's determination to wash her car* outside my bedroom window just after dawn means that I really need to prioritise. This is not a day in which I will be able to do everything.



*And then take her kids to school an hour later, and then the postie came, and then... four different things, each an hour apart, meant neither enough sleep nor good sleep to get through a tough day

gillpolack @ 2015-02-20T15:00:00

When I heard about the cyclones (and thought about the friends who are directly in their path, and the friends and family who are less directly in their path and hunkered down right now, wet and waiting) I instantly thought "This reminds me of the first two times Trivium Publishing tried to get The Art of Effective Dreaming into the wider world. I logged onto my computer, only to find a message from my publisher. Effective Dreaming is available for advance purchase. Which means the book is still true to form.

You can advance purchase it here: http://satalyte.com.au/product/the-art-of-effective-dreaming/

All my friends and family who have reported in are fine. They're bad storms, but the worst is hitting less densely-populated areas, which is a very big something.

And I nearly have a new novel. This is quite a different something.

gillpolack @ 2015-02-19T11:48:00

Things are beginning to look not impossible. Although I'm PMTish and an idiot government plan got a young man scolded by me today. One does not knock on every single flat in a block during worktime, hoping to find someone at home at change lightbulbs for a government energy scheme. No advance warning. No realisation that it was entry to private property that he was asking for, and that he should show identification first (a pamphlet is not identification). My first thought was that the guy was a scam, but I went outside - ostensibly to look for letters, for we've been robbed recently and I now must look early - and he had the right equipment with him.

A few years ago I was lightbulb-changed (and energy-rated) by the NSW scheme, and we had a letter in advance and could change the day if it didn't suit. So either it's a burglar looking to see who's home (another reason why I went outside - if he knows someone is irate, he might leave our block) or it's someone trying to mark off as many homes as possible by finding flats and ringing everyone's doorbell.

I did not give him a rational scolding. All I could think was "I'm in the middle of much work" and so I made no sense. That's the point, though - I'm in the middle of much work, I should have the option of saying "Today is no good, come back next week. And start with identification, please."

Anyhow, where are things up to? The real things. The things that are causing this pressure.

First, there are finally some jobs to apply for (not many, but actual jobs) and they all have closing dates over the next three days.

The Beast is up to those awkward final stages where everything needs to be done in order and carefully, but we want it over and with the editor.

The Art of Effective Dreaming is with the publisher - when I hear, you will hear. It will be out soon.

I still have one academic article to sort out. I still have fiction to sort out. The virus is finally almost gone and my eye is fine. My housework is not fine - I've been working and resting and dealing with so very much stuff that most of my housework is sitting round, accusingly. And I should not have to have it done in the case that strange young men might want to interrupt my work and change my lightbulbs. Any guilt over not having washed dishes or put recycling out ought to be for different reasons entirely.

Not bad, all round, except, obviously, for the being easily annoyed aspect. (I know it was PMTish for when I am annoyed and not PMT I am very lucid and lucid I was not. I might be fun to be around for a couple of days. This means I need coffee. Now.).

In other non-news (since this is a non-news post) I'm missing a bunch of friends doing cool things this weekend. It's outside Canberra, though, and until all my deadlines are met, my boundaries are limited.

gillpolack @ 2015-02-16T16:46:00

The good news is that my eyes are stable. The bleeding was a blip. A surprising one, but a blip.

The bad news is that my deadlines and the virus (the one keeps returning, the virus that I am naming 'the undead') have got the better of me. I'll be on social media less and on LJ not at all until Friday. Too many deadlines, too much virus.

gillpolack @ 2015-02-16T08:24:00

Today may be a bit busy, which explains entirely why I"m having trouble getting started. I have a handbag full of messages to do on the way back from my eye check. When I'm home, I will have until 5.30ish to finish this edit. Then I'm seeing folks (at a book signing - they're solid social functions for me when I can get there, which isn't often enough) and, in about 12 hours time, I have a meeting. I haven't factored food into any of this. Except coffee, I've factored coffee.

gillpolack @ 2015-02-15T12:30:00

Today's marketing was quick, because there wasn't much I needed (I intend to experiment with cauliflower this week, for I'm only allowed limited carbs again) and because the virus tag-end is still causing me more distress than it ought. I also have inordinate amounts of work to do, today, mostly on the Beast.

This weekend was going to be the relaxed time when I got rid of the virus, but deadlines are deadlines and must be met. I reserve the right to whinge!

In other news, the two articles that needed work are done. One is a chapter, rather than an article. It turned out that there were three, but one isn't due for a few more days and is a fairly straightforward restructure (apparently my brain was thinking in convoluted fashion when I sent it in), so that's OK. Or will be, when I finish what I'm doing now. And that will make three article-length NF pieces this year (with the potential for a fourth, and for a short story or novella, all going well), which has to be a not-bad thing. I don't know how much other job applicants are publishing, but a monograph and two novels and a book chapter and a regular academic article and a non-peer reviewed article has to be respectable. If I find a publisher for the other book, I can do the same again next year, too, for two novels are contracted, and two articles already. This ought to be good, oughtn't it? Except I suspect it's not.

I'll be more confident after tomorrow morning, when I see the hospital about the eye, and after tomorrow evening, when the Beast will be pummeled into good behaviour. I shall proceed to that now.

gillpolack @ 2015-02-15T07:32:00

I'm going to the market in a few minutes but I've already done over an hour's work today. This is because of the weather. If I can't sleep, and if the opening of the story I promised to write appears in my mind, then I might as well work. Most of today's work is editing, still (we ought to be just proof-reading at this stage, but life sometimes throws whammies) so it's nice to have a break, and even nicer to get started on the new story. I don't have long to write it (for its length and what it's about, which is not quite my usual) so getting started was important.

I've also sorted out the route my characters will take and was surprised to find that it only takes 6 hours all up to travel it. If only I drove, I could do the whole thing in a long day, starting early and returning late to Canberra. Or maybe do it comfortably with an overnight in the mountains and time to see the sights. I wish!

I'm going to try to get a few more minutes of the editing done before I go. Every bit counts. And we don't have time for it to go on past Monday.

gillpolack @ 2015-02-14T00:38:00

I'm supposed to be working, but it's past midnight and I decided to look again at the photos my nephew scanned for me some time ago. I inherited the photos when Les died (along with a couple of other mementos - his niece kept them aside specially, for Les and I were close) and gave them to another nephew, for a major birthday, and Y scanned them for me and kept a copy of the scanned images for himself. We were all happy with this.

They were all take by my cousin Les* with his box brownie. They're not full size photos, and there are quite a few missing. He took them in the Middle East during WWII. I think of them as "Our ANZACs as tourists."

Every now and again I take a look at them and I always forget certain parts and am surprised each and every time I haul them up on the screen. There were two sequences that struck me tonight.

The first was taken at a Hebron beach. I've never been there, so I don't know if there is more than one beach at Hebron, but being Australian I assume that all places have at least a half dozen beaches until someone gently explains otherwise. It consists of a bunch of Australian soldiers. Every one of them is completely naked, very much at ease and obviously having a fine time. Some of the soldiers are named. I've not checked to see if they're enlisted men or if I have pin-ups of officers. I'm not sure I dare. I'm also not sure that their descendents would be entirely happy if I chased them up and offered copies, explaining "Your grandfather's war service." It's a very Aussie set of pictures.

More surprising is who my cousin Les met socially, outside the army. Les is from the left wing intellectual side of the family, so Les spending time with an intellectual and art family in Palestine during time out and taking photos of them is not surprising. What was surprising was to find that the young son was a physicist and moved to the US in the 50s and that he is a man of significant renown. I do wonder how the pacifist side of the family (same branch as the military!) dealt with that link to something truly as nasty as the Bomb. I need to think about it for me, too. These were friends of one of my favourite cousins, so it's a real link. About a half dozen photos.

Tonight I'm pondering the bizarre coincidences in a small world. And pondering why Australian soldiers (possibly officers) should have felt the need to bath naked in a foreign land during wartime and to take pictures of themselves so doing. They are tasteful pictures, let me reassure you.

No more work for me tonight. I wish I had more old photos to look through, though.





*My father's first cousin. His older sister was a generation older than Dad, and was Linda, who I've mentioned here before. Dad was not young when he had me, and my father's first cousin was older than my mother's uncle (the fighter pilot) and I suspect a bit older than my mother's other uncle, the who was on the Kokoda Track. Does this help with contextualisation? I'm not suddenly 70 years old - there are big age differences in my family on Dad's side. In fact, my paternal grandmother was born in the nineteenth century: that really says it all!

Farewell Schroedinger's Gillian

One of my students pointed out last night that people could advance order my next book*. Another called it up on their computer, instantly. We rejoiced muchly, for it was the Beast, and had gone online with a temporary cover.

This is how I discovered that Schroedinger's Gillian is no longer. Finally, finally, I can tell you what the Beast is and why it's occupied fifteen years of my time. I'll tell you what it is now, and leave the rest for interviews, for it's a good story. All of my books attract good stories, which is a mixed blessing.

The Beast is a book about the Middle Ages aimed originally at writers. It's now aimed at a more general audience because apparently it's the sort of book more people need. Writers (especially historical fiction writers) have backed it to the hilt, however - they're partly responsible for this lovely outcome. "You can't come to us and teach," they kept saying, whenever I just wanted to let the whole thing go and get on with other projects, "So we need the book."

It's taken fifteen years to bring the Beast to this point. My albatross is almost ready to fly away and live its own life! It won't fly away until June, however, and right now Katrin and I are working very hard on the final manuscript. We're close, though, and the book can be pre-ordered: those wing feathers are growing apace.

The Beast's focus is on England from 1050-1300ish, but France comes into it. It's not a simplistic overview. We (meaning my co-author Katrin and myself) have tried not to say "Look, people were religious in the Middle Ages. Deal with it." We've tried to explain things.

It's shrunk over the years, to something that can be used. It was a Gormeghast Beast at one stage. It's changed focus over the years. It's changed co-author over the years. And all my bad jokes have been gently brushed aside and no longer litter the text. The Beast (now officially called "The Middle Ages Unlocked") is a serious beast, substantial but not overlong, and a good place of first call for writers and re-enactors and people who want to argue over dinner about Medieval French dialects in England.

This and the various novels coming out (that have come out) and the scholarly articles also happening (which I ought to talk about one day) and what's happening at the university teaching-wise (I am mentoring other teachers, for one thing) mean that, on opening the box, we find that Gillian is neither alive nor dead, but is, in fact what she thought she might be, which is a historian and a fiction writer and an academic (teacher and researcher and committee person and all!). Making a living out of being all these things is the next challenge. If I can't, I'll have to drop everything except the fiction and even the fiction will be wound back. In other words, I need an academic job if I want to remain all these things: I don't have the finances to go it alone.

Everyone knows what kind of Gillian I am, now. We have yet to discover if this is a good thing.



*Which is really the book after next, but with different publishers and quite, quite different books.

gillpolack @ 2015-02-12T13:01:00

I'm taking a break in my regular proceedings to announce that I'm looking very happily (possibly even gloatingly) at Eero Sarkkinen's Finnish translation of "Someone's Daughter" (my story from the Next anthology, ed by Simon Petrie and Rob Porteous). Thank you Eero and thank you also to the people who produce Alienisti in the city of Jyväskylä! (Which is an extraordinarily beautiful place and whose SF fans are people I want to see again, for they're awesome and kind and one in particular is an amazing cook.)

And now I return to my regular plan of overwork. I managed to postpone the first meeting of the day, though, which makes everything possible.