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photo credit: gcoldironjr2003
Seems like cathartic
self-obsessed blog ramblings do wonders! After the previous post, I got moving. I packed up all my Hyper magazines into a now-immovable cardboard box, barely squeezed in my CDs alongside Cian’s (we have 32 litres of music, Cian MAKE THAT 94 HOLY SHIT [gotta use that in a story or poem somewhere, litres of music, genius!]), and shoved my DVDs and video games into another box. That’s all the little stuff done, the big collections remaining are mainly my clothes (really wish I hadn’t gone mental on Threadless) and my books (really wish I hadn’t worked at Dymocks). But at least it’s started. Thankfully I don’t have to move my bed, Louise’s folks have kindly let her keep hers. This is kind of a big deal, because that bed is fucking amazing. It’s like a Queen-and-a-bit, and is thus far the only bed to successfully fit me without a diagonal arrangement. I admit I haven’t been too kind to it; I’ve broken two of the slats by jumping on it (yes, jumping on it, nothing more youdirty-minded people) too enthusiastically, but I’ll pay for the replacements I promise!
I also drove into university and went through the process of making sure everything was ready for Tuesday’s (now tomorrow’s) trip to Sydney. I’m really fired up now, can’t wait to get over there and experiment! It’ll be a lot more easy-going than my last two trips to national facilities: the Australian Synchrotron was an effort in trying to stay awake for twenty-four hours straight, changing samples every hour, and the Argonne APS wasn’t my work, but involved similarly jet-lagged endurance sessions. This time it’s two samples that I can set and forget for eight hours at a time or so. Brutal. In the mean time I get to bug the beam line scientists to get them to help me get the most out of my data. Am I a nerd to be excited over this? No, just human. If you had worked on the same thing for three years and had an upcoming opportunity to put the nail in it’s irritatingly-unsolvable structure, you’d be excited too.
Some links for writerly types now:
- The Katherine Susannah Pritchard Speculative Fiction Award is now open for submissions. It’s just about the only W.A.-based prize I’ve heard of in the last six months or so, so please enter it! It’s open to all Aussies, but us sandgropers have got to represent, yo. Also, if you aren’t the speculatory kind, they have a straight fiction prize open as well. The specualtive prize closes May 29th, so you’ve got just under a month to get your ideas straight.
- An amusing blog post I found via Twitterism, ‘5 things writers believe about editors‘. The list is msotly predictable, but I enjoyed the final ‘truth’ stated at the bottom. Reinforcing the idea that no industry is immune to networking and the esteem it brings.
- If you missed it on Thursday, the ABC iViewer has the Lateline episode in which author Garth Nix and the Dymocks (boo hiss) boss go head to head over the proposed changes to parallel book importation. Definitely an interesting watch if you’ve ever worked in the book selling industry.
- Finally a previously unheard of to me publication, Framelines, is open for submissions by budding young artists and authors alike. The production looks slick, so send in your best!
My personal writing is going okay still. Got a bit of feedback for a couple of poems I posted at the PFFA. No-one is falling over themselves to praise my stuff, but neither are they dismissing it out of hand. I figure that’s the best place to be. I can only go up from here. (:
