Since I posted here. I was thinking, about the novel I'm writing, which led one thing after another on a very long journey - pretty much around the entire Hundred Acre Wood.
I also paused to write three short stories in the interim.
You can find them respectively:
On Teresa Derwin's fanzine Andromeda's Offspring : I wrote a Lila Black story for her which started turning into a novella so it may appear in a longer and better worked out version sometime later. "Blood and Ink" - so many more possibilities than I had time to explore...
In the new anthology from Comma Press - so new it isn't listed or out yet but I will notify when it is. This is a follow up anthology to "When It Changed" in which I also had a story written with and by and for actual scientists!
The third one, "Pwnage", will appear next year in the Technology Review SF edition, again, I'll flag after publication.
They were all fun but so diverting. That's what happens when the grass looks springy on the other side of the fence and you're just a gal who cain't say no...
And meanwhile the next two months will be filled with an short but exciting project that thrills me through my childish soul. I can't tell any details, but let's just say it involves some robots in disguise...
I have always loved those.
Saturday, 6 October 2012
Tuesday, 17 January 2012
Erotomania's End
Well, I haven't posted in a long time. I was away thinking. Also I played some games. And read and did all that stuff writers do when they're very slowly plodding away on something, or, in my case, trying to establish human sexual identity and power relationships as 'a problem' in scientific terms, and then 'solve' it. I know what you're going to say...you're going to say, "A problem like a maths problem? Isn't that a little bit too Amy Farrah Fowler, even for YOU?"
Yes. Really it is. However, in my defence I say -
But I was all SCARED about just writing from the juggernaut front of my heart and brain because well, the Science Fiction critics of my (let's face it mostly inner) world scare me and I wanted to stand on some big unassailable hill of Factology to mount the defence I was sure I'd have to make...
Yeah, never mind that not actually writing the book to completion does kind of have the same effect (avoidance, much?). And what horrors must the thing contain to elicit such a reaction? I bet already imaginations are turning to some fevered dream combining the art of Witchblade, a Mitzi Szereto anthology, the bits of Laurell K Hamilton that you don't want your Mom to find and the Hite Report. Yeah. No. Well. Maybe. And if it was like that what a great thing it would be: I'd read it!
See, in my mind it's like that. In reality it's not so much, although I kind of wish it was. What I really ran up against wasn't the Mighty Sages of Science Fiction (don't laugh, they're sensitive) but a big monster from my childhood, not unlike the Assumptions About Everything Especially Parental Views And Peer Ridicule and Social Norms Like In The Daily Mail that pollute every synapse of my pathetically brainwashed grey matter so that for me to write my probably quite normal and mildly interesting book I first have to get over the kind of anxiety that used to propel our ancestors across some Proto-Serengeti in terror of their lives.
M John Harrison made a note on his blog about that kind of thing recently, noting his escape. HOW I ENVY YOU, MIKE! I've been out rebelling and plotting said escape a long time without actually managing it: I thought I'd know when it was a done deal by the sudden sense of peace and uncaringness that would come along whenever I was about to write what I thought was a Big Deal Thing. I would sit calmly with my cup of tea, staring at the middle class suburbs and easily type out line after line without a second thought or the need to rush off and pretend to be a Sith Lord in a virtual universe every twenty minutes.
I expect you're wondering about the Erotomania bit of the title by now. I confess, I spent six months reading nothing but romance, erotica, women writing about feminism and sex and immersing myself in anthropological, mystic and anecdotal blah de blah about same. In the words of a well known MMO Achievement: What a Long, Strange Trip It's Been!
And now I certainly have things to write about in my half done novel. Who would have thought you could be passionate about passion? It's my last, great hope for.... Anyway, hurrah for ploughing through the steamy doldrums of the creative sea!
And, final note, fans of World of Warcraft might like to take a loot at this book which is what I wrote on me holidays, along with Adrian Tchaikovsky and a bunch of other trippers...
Yes. Really it is. However, in my defence I say -
But I was all SCARED about just writing from the juggernaut front of my heart and brain because well, the Science Fiction critics of my (let's face it mostly inner) world scare me and I wanted to stand on some big unassailable hill of Factology to mount the defence I was sure I'd have to make...
Yeah, never mind that not actually writing the book to completion does kind of have the same effect (avoidance, much?). And what horrors must the thing contain to elicit such a reaction? I bet already imaginations are turning to some fevered dream combining the art of Witchblade, a Mitzi Szereto anthology, the bits of Laurell K Hamilton that you don't want your Mom to find and the Hite Report. Yeah. No. Well. Maybe. And if it was like that what a great thing it would be: I'd read it!
See, in my mind it's like that. In reality it's not so much, although I kind of wish it was. What I really ran up against wasn't the Mighty Sages of Science Fiction (don't laugh, they're sensitive) but a big monster from my childhood, not unlike the Assumptions About Everything Especially Parental Views And Peer Ridicule and Social Norms Like In The Daily Mail that pollute every synapse of my pathetically brainwashed grey matter so that for me to write my probably quite normal and mildly interesting book I first have to get over the kind of anxiety that used to propel our ancestors across some Proto-Serengeti in terror of their lives.
M John Harrison made a note on his blog about that kind of thing recently, noting his escape. HOW I ENVY YOU, MIKE! I've been out rebelling and plotting said escape a long time without actually managing it: I thought I'd know when it was a done deal by the sudden sense of peace and uncaringness that would come along whenever I was about to write what I thought was a Big Deal Thing. I would sit calmly with my cup of tea, staring at the middle class suburbs and easily type out line after line without a second thought or the need to rush off and pretend to be a Sith Lord in a virtual universe every twenty minutes.
I expect you're wondering about the Erotomania bit of the title by now. I confess, I spent six months reading nothing but romance, erotica, women writing about feminism and sex and immersing myself in anthropological, mystic and anecdotal blah de blah about same. In the words of a well known MMO Achievement: What a Long, Strange Trip It's Been!
And now I certainly have things to write about in my half done novel. Who would have thought you could be passionate about passion? It's my last, great hope for.... Anyway, hurrah for ploughing through the steamy doldrums of the creative sea!
And, final note, fans of World of Warcraft might like to take a loot at this book which is what I wrote on me holidays, along with Adrian Tchaikovsky and a bunch of other trippers...
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