Three-Ingredient Thursday: The Dark Dinosaur
You can argue the case that this has only two ingredients. I would.
NB: The zombie cat is not an ingredient. She is cunningly hidden on a chair underneath a glass table.
Method: Break orange intense Lindt into squares. Make sandwich with a dinosaur (or several snakes). Eat before CJ comes home and find a suspicious depletion of the chocolate I bought for him.
I’m particularly proud of the way the snakes glisten ominously in this photo.
Now I always knew this would taste good. It wasn’t a difficult thought process to walk through. But to be honest, I thought it was a little bit of a waste of fine chocolate and natural brand confectionary, since the consumption speed is vastly different and (I thought) non-complimentary. However.
The Lindt chocolate is thin enough and dark enough that it more or less dissolves in the mouth, but fills the senses with dark chocolate goodness (the orange intense flavour removes the usual bitterness of dark chocolate, FYI). The dinosaur takes more time to chew, but that is fine because the flavour of the chocolate remains in the mouth. Thus, the symbiotic relationship makes this dish awesome.
QED.
In other news, I helped prevent a high-speed crash today.
Canberra basically has one 100-kilometer zone: The Tuggeranong Parkway. I was driving there this afternoon, between heavy bouts of rain and mist, and observed a car attempting to change lanes. They clearly hadn’t head-checked their blind spot, because there was a truck exactly beside them in the right hand lane. The truck immediately noticed the Honda Jazz moving toward them and swerved away, but they couldn’t go far because of the concrete boundary in the centre of the Parkway
The Honda Jazz driver was clearly still oblivious to the truck – there was no sudden swerve back into their lane. So I beeped my horn. Most of us have a guilty conscience, and immediately assume a beeping horn is someone telling us we’re being stupid. It worked. The Jazz immediately did that classic over-compensatory swerve back into their own space, and then corrected themself.
All of which happened in moments, on a wet road with low visibility, at a hundred kilometres an hour.
That’s right: I’m a freaking hero.
Also, if they had collided, I’d have probably rear-ended both of them and died horribly.
To celebrate three lives saved, here’s a flickr.com picture of a rainforest.
#178: Kick your life goal in the eye
Sometimes, having a grand life dream just sucks.
Here are two simple stats I wish I’d known fifteen years ago:
1. Only 1 in 10,000 books gets published via the slushpile (ie, by just sending it to “sir/madam” at a publisher who seems to fit).
2. Authors who are doing pretty darn well – ie they’re published, and selling well enough to continue selling one or two books each year (and to have the time to write them) – generally earn around $10,000 per year. Many of them write full-time. That’s about $5/hour – not counting expenses.
And maybe I’d have benefited from some other stats about the rate of mental illness and/or divorce for writers.
Don’t get me wrong, though, I’d still write. If I spend more than a couple of days without writing, I miss it badly. And I was lucky enough to know from an early age that writing doesn’t make you rich (okay, there are perhaps ten fabulously rich writers IN THE WORLD, and another hundred earning a respectable amount. You’re more likely to win lotto than be one of them. There are a LOT of writers in the world, and not enough readers to go around – I recently heard 87% of Americans want to write a book some day, and only 50% have actually read a book in the last twelve months).
I’ve mentioned before than Ian Irvine says it takes 10,000 hours to get good at writing. I also mentioned that I was halfway – I’ve been writing to a self-imposed quota since 2006.
Lately I’ve been taking (another) hard look at my writing “career”, and realised it could easily be five more years until I’m accepted for book publication. I wrote myself a five-year plan (with “actually get published” at the very end) to try and teach myself to accept that this is how it’s going to be.
Fail.
Ever since realising statistic # 1, life has looked a lot darker. I temporarily lifted my mood by signing up for two more conferences (a rational thing to do after finding out how important contacts are, however scary and expensive the experience), but why would I go to so much effort when nothing’s going to happen for so many more long and soul-crushing years?
So I made a new plan. A better one. One in which I manipulate mathematics for personal gain.
I re-counted my writing hours. Here’s the breakdown:
School English classes (uni is part of school): 2000 hours.
School projects (practising written expression): 650 hours.
Quota hours: 5000 (by end of this year)
Stories written in my own time: 100 hours (primary school)
160 hours (high school)
200 hours (Year 11 and 12 – I wrote over 50,000 words in just two manuscripts, and entered a LOT of short story competitions in order to take advantage of being able to enter youth competitions).
Gap year: 400 hours (I hand-wrote a 200,000 word book)
2001 (first year of uni): 210 (among other things, I typed and edited that hand-written book. And wrote another 50,000 word book.)
2002: 130 hours (I wrote most of my first fantasy novel)
2003: 50 hours
Two National Novel Writing Months (I don’t remember which years): 200 hours
2004: 700 hours (I became obsessed with finishing the fantasy trilogy, and at the end of that year I sat down and estimated how much time I’d spent writing)
2005: 200 (I did fifty hours editing for the National Novel Editing Month, and wrote another 50,000 word book, plus short stories).
Well! Wouldya look at that. Turns out I’ve ALREADY done 10,000 hours of writing – or at least, I will have by the end of this year. So I’m probably pretty good by now.
And we’re back to the manic-depressive state of, “Are they gonna call me today? How about tomorrow? Any second now. . .”
Which is horrible and unhealthy, but better than despair.
TA DAAAAA!!!
Play along at home: Spend just one hour pursuing a dream (however big or small). If you’d like to be a writer*, write something!
Personally, I’m going to go and check my email. Perhaps that six-book deal is sitting there waiting**.
Coming sorta soon: The Dark Dinosaur (tomorrow)
Experiment on your pet *maniacal giggle*
Clothing Attack
In the meantime, here’s your Flickr.com photo for today:
*you poor sad schmuck
**It wasn’t. But maybe NOW!!!
Excuse me, your black hole is showing
Today I wrote (again) to publisher B. Here’s what I wrote, for better or worse (you may observe that names have been changed):
Hi Bobette,
Another three months have passed, so it’s time for another email checking “Stormhunter” and “The Monster Apprentice” haven’t fallen into a slushpile void.
I enjoyed listening to and meeting [Bobette’s boss] at the “Reaching the World” con on July 3 in Sydney.
Since I’ll be attending the “CYA Later Alligator” con in September, I decided to pitch “The Monster Apprentice” to one of the publishers there. I’ve let her know about you guys, of course.
That gave me an excuse to edit the book (always exciting, since my writing ability has improved since I sent it).
Other than improving the synopsis and fixing minor flaws, I gave Dance a twin sister. The sister died some years ago, when Dance’s dad was angry with her and the empathic heest monsters rose up through the ice in concern. The ice melted and the girl drowned. She and Dance are identical twins – except for Dance’s lazy eye.
This piece of background gives Dance a phobia to overcome as well as a reason for her rebelliousness (because she thinks she can never match up to her sister – something everyone with a sibling can relate to). It also motivates her dad’s pacifism, and makes the danger of the monsters clear from the start. The shame of failing her Aging ceremony is much more painful, too.
Dance faces her own nightmares when she first approaches the heest. She and her dad finally understand one another after they face the pirates together at the end.
I don’t expect you to re-read “The Monster Apprentice” from the beginning all over again (although do let me know if a better synopsis is useful), but here’s the first two hundred words so you can see what I’m talking about if you want to.
Felicity
CHAPTER ONE
I awoke from a dead sleep – for once, a sleep without nightmares. My bedroom was pitch black and silent, but my heart was racing. Then the sound came again – a man shouting at the top of his voice. He pounded at my front door.
“Elder!” The man’s voice was sharp with terror. “Elder! Wake up!”
The night air was hot and still. My sheets lay in a crumpled heap on the floor. At the open window my curtains hung in unmoving black lines. No wind slid through to ease the stifling heat. My mane of black hair felt heavy around my head. I didn’t dare move.
Dad would check on me before he went to answer the yelling. Ever since my sister died, he was that type of dad. Whenever he felt worried about something I was told to go to my room – to sleep, if it was night time. No matter how many nightmares I had.
He was forever telling me to be careful – but I was definitely not going to miss out on the fun this time. So I remained curled on my side as if I hadn’t heard a thing. If he didn’t tell me to go back to sleep, sneaking out wasn’t disobeying him. Not exactly.
#97: Cancel Fu
These days, everyone is running around, stressed over this and that and “I said I’d get right on to such-and-such”. We hold on so tightly to our plans. So, when we let something go, it’s a wonderful feeling.
That is my awesomeness for today – not doing anything awesome today (whoaa, what a paradox). Personally, I’m going back to bed.
What are you going to not do today?
And here’s a true story (published in a “Short and Twisted” anthology a few years ago). It happened to Ben.
Naked Man in the Bushes
There’s not much to do in Canberra.
I walked home from Belconnen Interchange on a Wednesday night. It was ten o’clock, so there were no more buses. Drunk men were everywhere, and they all seemed to be stalking their ex-wives. They talked to contacts on mobiles. ‘Yes, she’s going toward Ginninderra Drive now. See if you can head her off.’
My concern rose significantly when I noticed an adult male crouching in bushes by the roadside. He was nude.
I kept my eyes forward and debated whether or not I should call someone. Unable to remember the number for the naked stalker hotline, I walked by on the other side of the road. A second naked man burst from a tree immediately in front of me and sprinted to the traffic island splitting Belconnen Way.
‘Marco!’ he yelled.
‘Polo!’ came the reply.
THE END
And here’s today’s Flickr.com picture:
S#67: Make someone’s day
Yet another friend had a birthday on the weekend, and a bunch of us went out to dinner. I managed to manipulate events to get almost all of them to come back to my house bearing ice cream, chocolate, and assorted candy. We made our own fantastic creations with (among other things) mint chocolate sprinkles, maltesers, honey nougat chocolate, mini M&Ms, flake bars, and so on. It amused me how pathetically grateful the birthday boy was, considering I’d been scheming for hours for some way to make dinner segue into a house party.
People eating:
(If you look closely, you can see: Someone dangling from an anchor; a camel; one extra set of hands; two clocks; just one person who actually noticed the camera.)
And this is what I ate (you can tell I’m a little stressed about two upcoming writing conferences – the ice cream is the healthy part):
Coming soon: Some stuff, probably. Not really sure what, to be perfectly honest. More flickr.com pictures, in any case:
Incidentally, if you’re wondering what the “S” stands for in the title, it’s Steff Metal – http://steffmetal.com/101-ways-to-cheer-yourself-up/
#177: The Piper
A scottish-born friend of ours celebrated his 50th today, so his friends were all summoned to celebrate – as Scottishly as we knew how.*
One five-year old took a look at him and said, “Hey look! He’s wearing the same dress I am!”
Awesome.
Due to a tug-of-war gone horribly right, I also finally saw what a Scotsman wears under his kilt.**
I was also pleased to observe an elderly lady who’d obviously been as stumped for Scottish-ish gear as I was. She’d found a tartan pencil case and wore it proudly on her head. Another lovely old lady brought out a set of electric bagpipes and the sunny Canberra day suddenly sounded like rain-swept plains on an isolated headland.
And then, during afternoon tea. . . the piéce de resistance. We heard the drone and pipes approaching from outside, and paused with half-eaten shortbread en route to our mouths. There’s no mystery when you hear the skirl of pipes – no wondering, “Is that what I think it is?” Short of the yowling of angry cats, there’s no sound like it.
And in came the piper, in full regalia (including a beard that he assured his many groupies was once red). At the doorway we all gasped in wonder and delight. As he entered the room the sheer unmistakeable power of bagpipe volume FILLED THE ROOM.
One forgets how loud pipes can be.
Not sure how.
All up, a freaking brilliant afternoon.
And, as usual, here’s a nice bit of forest to feast your eyes on (thanks to Flickr.com):
*ie, not very.
**shorts.
S#31: Join the Library
Mmm. . . booooooooks. . .
Flushed with the success of the “Reaching the World” YA writers’ conference in Sydney on July 3 (and wide-eyed with the new data that only 1 in 10,ooo books gets published via the “look up publishers and send the book to The Editor” method), I’ve decided to go to two more conferences. . . starting this month.
First, the Melbourne Writers’ Festival (plus I get to help launch the 30th issue of Going Down Swinging, since I’m in it – as Felicity Bloomfield, since the story is horror). This is a ten-day con of epic proportions – Joss Whedon and Neil Gaiman will be there (no use to my career, much as I admire them) plus many publishers and writers.
Second, the CYA Later, Alligator! conference in Brisbane. CYA stands for Children and Young Adult writers. I’ll be pitching one of my books directly to a lady from Publisher J. I’m in a fabulous mood right now because I figured out a way to make it much better at around 2am this morning. CJ agreed that my idea was brilliant.*
There are literally hundreds of writers and publishers, and I’ll be listening to or connecting with about fifty. Thus I’m in the process of scouring the internet for the most relevant books and [this is the bit where I get to the point] borrowing terrifyingly high piles of novels from the library.
So far, I have fifteen books to read – and I’m barely started. The last two cons I went to (in July, and the Sydney Freecon last November) introduced me to exactly one faint-with-exhilaration-because-they’re-so-good author each – Pamela Freeman, and Sandy Fussell.
Later this month, I’ll report back and tell you who is the pick of the bunch this time. So far I’ve read one book, and it was hideously bad (something which I won’t mention to the author when I go to her book launch).
Play along at home: borrow Pamela Freeman’s adult trilogy (the first is “Blood Ties”) and/or Sandy Fussell’s “Samurai Kids” books from your local library. (I’ve decided that Sandy Fussell’s series sets the standard for children’s books worldwide, and have read the first book three times so far, studying how she puts it together and wins readers over. The second and third are also exquisite, but I’m saving the rest for later.)
You’re welcome.
In other news, I went to a new doctor yesterday (one closer to where I live). To cut a long story short, I had food poisoning in Indonesia in January, and I still haven’t 100% recovered. I’ve been wondering if I’ve developed some of the food intolerances (including fructose malapsorption – ie allergic to several fruits) that are just, like, so hot right now. She reckoned I have – temporarily (which answers my question AND means I can eat whatever, comfy in the thought that I’ll continue to improve over the next few years). Among other things, she said I should go lactose and gluten-free for at least three months – just in case they’re the triggers. In less crazy news, she said I should take inner health plus. So I went and bought some (despite the fact it costs almost a dollar per pill – yikes). Inner health plus is a probiotic – each pill contains literally millions of tiny little guys to help me digest stuff. Hopefully all those microorganisms will do their thing so well that at the NEXT writing conference, no-one will ask me when I’m expecting.
The human body is SO GROSS. Don’t you love it?
I’m also finding, lately, that I often forget it’s Winter. I just walk around, reasonably comfortable, enjoying the sunshine and living life. It seems mad, but apparently “Love your Fear” actually worked. Thank you Steff Metal for the suggestion!
And here’s today’s pretty pretty Flickr.com pics (two for the price of one, you lucky sods):
*Or at least, he mumbled something that sounded like, “Brilliant.”
Problem solved – with horrible death
I had one of those days yesterday when I couldn’t look at the book I’m working on. Some would call it writers’ block. I’m lucky, because there was a simple reason: I didn’t want to make the dad bad. It messed up a lot of things (particularly since the whole island is so small they’d all notice Dance’s injuries and be culpable), and (since no-one’s ever physically abused me or anyone I love) didn’t resonate at all.
At 2am this morning, though, I found the solution. Dance is a twin – an identical twin, and her sister is dead. Naturally, being dead, Dance’s sister is perfect in every way, and gives Dance a foil she can never live up to.
I often think of my own sister as a little like who I would have been if I wasn’t so messed up – exaggerate that feeling (by making the sister the same age, and dead), and I have something I can use to drive Dance to feel and do everything she does in the book – AND resolve that feeling in the end, as her dad stands by her side against the pirates.
Voila! When in doubt, kill someone.
#176: Eat cookie dough
Mmm
Louise’s Lardylicious Choc Chip Cookies:
Mix:
3/4ths c white sugar
3/4ths c brown sugar
1 egg
1/2 c oil
1 cup butter (softened or melted)
1 tsp vanilla esence
Mix and add to above:
3 c flour
3 c cornflakes
1 tsp cream of tartar
1 tsp baking soda
Cook at 175 degrees celsius for about 12 minutes (or not).
Due to technical problems, there’s no photo today. Sorry! Go search for “rainforest” on Flickr.com if you want to see something pretty.
“Peace Hostage” story so far
1
The boar was so close I could taste the stench of it. I pressed the butt of my spear into the rocky ground and shouted a challenge.
The bleeding pig squealed and charged right onto my spear. It hit the crossguard and broke it off. I held on, staring at my death.
Tem covered my body with his. He screamed as the pig gored him. I crawled away, pulling him with me. Dad cheered as the pig bled out.
2
Dad and I lay bloated with pork at the door of our hut. Dad said, “That boy, he’s too stupid for you. Getting gored like that.” I blushed.
Dad turned serious: “Truly, Sawi, it can’t be. Tem returns to his tribe next month, or those Yah will kill us – like they killed your Ma.”
“I know, Dad.” He laid his hand on mine: “If Tem doesn’t heal up and go home, your brother’s life is forfeit – and all our lives too.”
3
“Chief!” screamed my best friend, Iv. Dad stood. Iv wept: “Your son! The Yah have murdered their peace hostage. We are at war.”
Dad ordered Tem and I inside. We sat silently, holding hands. Tem kissed each of my fingers. I said, “My tribe must kill you now.” “I know.”
Tem said, “Everyone dies. My life switched with your brother’s life bought our tribes ten years of peace. That is enough for me. I am full.”
4 – do day 5 very late tonight!
Dad stood guard while the village waited for him to decide the blooding hour, and who would make the kill. Tem and I didn’t leave the house.
“Sawi? Will it be your Dad who kills me?” “Don’t speak like-– why are you smiling?” He grabbed my hand and pulled me awkwardly, so I fell.
Tem kissed me, knocking our noses together. I gasped. “You fiend! My Dad’ll kill you—oh!” We dissolved into helpless giggles.
5
Dad saw me staring into our fire and said, “I will stop the blooding as long as I can.” I looked into his eyes, and bowed my head.
“Tem! Wake up!” He blinked at me. I said, “I’m going to go into Yah land – and save you.” He said, “Don’t get killed.” “Same to you.”
Tem said, “My Mum loves me. She’ll help you.” I held his hand, and kissed him carefully. We didn’t knock noses. I crept away into the night.
6
I found the ruined stream where my mother’s bones still lay, with many others from both tribes. The Yah bank was black with shadows.
No-one stabbed me as I crossed the naked grass. I stepped into the freezing water, dislodging old skulls so they rolled on down the river.
