Not About Earthquakes Or Their Aftermaths

I don't know about you, but I definitely feel ready for a change of pace, at least for one day …

So on that note, what's some of the good writing stuff that's going down?

Firstly, I revised 27 pages of The Gathering of the Lost (The Wall of Night, Book Two) today—which may not sound like much, but it's a considerable advance on the 8 or so pages I managed on Monday, day-the-first of "getting back into it." So now my goal for tomorrow is to equal or better that target … (watch this space.)

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Secondly, I am very pleased to have had two poems, Starman and Penelope Dreaming, from my Ithaca Conversations sequence, accepted by editor Mark Pirie for Broadsheet 7. I understand Broadsheet 7 will be coming out sometime in May. Mark is also the Managing Editor of Headworx Publishers and co-edited Voyagers Science Fiction Poetry from New Zealand (Interactive Press 2009) with Tim Jones.

Bookman Beattie ran a nice feature on Broadsheet on his Beatties Bookblog on Monday 21—you can check it out here.

Interlitq 14

You may recall that I also had another poem from the Ithaca Conversations sequence, titled One Day, published in Interlitq 14 recently, together with Australia Post.

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OK, what's next? That's fairly easy because finally it's NZ Book Month (they skipped last year to shift the annual date from September/October to March.) As part of the nationwide celebrations I'll be in Otago/Southland from March 21-26, as a guest of the Dan Davin Literary Foundation, giving a series of workshops for high school kids as well as a public lecture in Invercargill. I'm really looking forward to it and have already done a bit of work on the workshop content—all those good ideas percolating away …

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Last but not least, I've received—and accepted!—an invitation to attend Context, this year's NZ National Science Fiction Fantasy Convention, to be held in Auckland over Queen's Birthday. I was very disappointed not to be able to attend Au Contraire last year due to a longstanding family event, so I am definitely pleased to be going to Context, especially with Catherine Asaro as the International Guest of Honour. Now I just have to put my thinking cap on and come up with some panel/discussion options.

Nice, too, just to have some positives to talk about after all the earthquake reports.:)