10 Journeys

10 Journeys is due to be released today (including At the Rawlings' Place, of course).  Unfortunately, I can't be in the UK to help celebrate its launch so thought I'd mark the occasion here instead.

At the Rawlings' Place is set in a fictional town in the Western Plains, which we travelled through this weekend, on our way to and from Daylesford (see last blog entry).  Thought I'd take a couple of photos to share an impression of the area, although without stitching several together it's hard to convey the flatness of the landscape, the vastness of the sky.  The story, I hope, will do that and more.

Oh, and hard-on-the-heels of my Five Wounds review, I've just posted an interview with Jonathan Walker and Dan Hallett across at The View From Here.

Press: RESET

Siân and I decided to press the RESET button at the weekend.

There's times when there's just too much crowding the head and it feels like the brain is about to explode.

Rather than redecorate the ceiling, we decided to head off to Daylesford, a few hours north.  No writing, no painting, no reading of other people's work, no reports to write, no chores - nothing.  A weekend of delicious sloth.

The area is renowned for its natural springs and, once upon a time, folk would head that way to take the waters and soak in the mineral-rich soup that sprang out of the ground.  Although we did a fair bit of walking (notably around Lake Daylesford) we didn't go for the waters so much as to soak up the wine and the food.

Found our way to two superb restaurants: Frangos & Frangos on the Friday evening and Mercato on  the Saturday.  Stunning.  If you happen to find yourself in Daylesford, give them a try.

Visited the market on Sunday and finally brought myself a hat that I've wanted to buy since I was 17.  I'm patient.  It only took me 35 years!

Anyway, with a tad more brain-space, I posted a review of Five Wounds by Jonathan Walker and Dan Hallett over at The View From Here today.  Have just finished work on an interview and will posting that soon too.  You can find the review here.

Recent Reads

 

Sometimes Jane Austen got things seriously wrong.  I came across this recently in Mansfield Park:

"If Fanny would be more regular in her exercise, she would not be knocked up so soon."

Hmm.  Quite the opposite.

Have been reading a remarkable book lately: Five Wounds, an illuminated novel by Jonathan Walker and Dan Hallett.  I'm not going to say much more about it right now, because I'll be reviewing it (as well having a chat with Messrs Walker and Hallett) over at The View From Here very soon, but you can find out more about it on Allen & Unwin's website.

10 Journeys

Just released over at the Legend Press website is this 'ere cover design for 10 Journeys - Legend Press' latest anthology of short stories featuring At the Rawlings' Place by yours truly.  The cover matches the style of the previous four anthologies superbly.

10 Journeys is available on the 27th May, but can be pre-ordered directly from Legend Press, Amazon and the other usual suppliers, of course.  Or get it from UK book stores in a couple of weeks time.

Book trailer for The Snowing and Greening of Thomas Passmore

I'm blown away by this amazing book trailer that Jen Persson (The View From Here and formerly aka The Amateur Book Blogger) has created.  Thanks, Jen.  All other words are redundant.  Gob-smacked.

Everything's broken

This last week has been one of those weeks.  Nothing important - just Technology doing its nut.  So much so that it's absurdly amusing.

• The food processor broke - beyond repair.
• The CD player died after a long illness.
• The microwave acted as if it had been taken over by a poltergeist: the number 4 randomly beeping onto the display, sometimes in quick succession and sometimes with a few hours between.
• The rechargeable batteries on the telephone gave up their ghost - during a phone call, of course.
• Yesterday, my laptop had a memory leak and couldn't open the Word document I wanted without spitting the dummy.
• Last night, at 2:27 am, one of the smoke alarms decided to go postal... until I ripped its guts out.

None of this stuff is essential.  Technology will turn me into a Luddite.

Tomorrow I will move into a cave, grind my own pigments and paint stories on the wall.

Here's Bob Dylan rehearsing Everything is Broken:

Coming up

Good to see the imminent release of The Grease Monkey's Tale announced on the Legend Press/PaperBooks website last week.  The current release date is June, although I know these things can change.  The next bit of excitement will be the cover designs, when they're ready.  And before long, all the anxieties will kick in.  Until it's on the shelves in book-stores and at least one person has read it and said they enjoyed it, I'll be like that shivering, old boat at the bottom of the sea: a nervous wreck.  But excited at the same time.

I'm working on Number Three and Number Four at the moment.  They're completely different to one another in mood and outcome - opposites in many ways, as The Grease Monkey's Tale is also opposite to The Snowing and Greening of Thomas Passmore - but I enjoy working that way: a couple of hours on one and then a couple of hours on the other.  It keeps me reasonably balanced, almost sane, and means there's always something I want to write.

Also working behind-the-scenes on The View From Here's Opportunities page.  Am enjoying getting in touch with publishers and literary agents, and getting a first-hand view of the "industry" from their perspective.  Interesting stuff.

Reading 8 Hours at the moment.  One of Legend Press' excellent anthologies of short stories.  Talking of which, it's only a few weeks before At the Rawlings' Place will appear in the next anthology of long-shorts: 10 Journeys.  Hmm, more excitement. 

Time out

Have taken the last week off from writing projects.  It's been a sociable time this Easter break, but has also given me a chance to catch up on a couple of jobs.  Mainly, the building of another set of bookshelves - before we have an avalanche of stacked books - and developing my new website.

I've been tinkering away with the new website for months and don't bother linking to the existing site any more because it looks way too clunky.  The new one has involved learning Flash, Fireworks, Dreamweaver and improving my poor understanding of Photoshop.  Anyway, the last week has given me a chance to hunker over the PC, develop some serious neck strain and bring out the inner nerd in me.  Yesterday, I got very excited at discovering how to create an animated button in Flash.  Whoopy-doo!

It'll still be a few weeks (at least) before I complete the site, I reckon, because I want to get it just right, but I'll have my own geeky launch and a party in digital wonderland when I do.

Painting (as in painting and decorating) isn't a job I enjoy.  I get bored.  And hate the smell of oil-based paints.  Whenever I can't put this off any longer, I find that I listen to the same 2 or 3 albums over and over again as I brush away (drips running down my arm), and that eventually they become associated in my head with a particular wall colour or room or, in this case, a set of bookshelves. Have put on a couple of coats of a stinky tint called 'Bounding Main' and have ended up listening to a good deal of Regina Spektor (Begin to Hope), Sarah Blasko (As Day Follows Night) and Charlie Parr (1922).  Lovely stuff.  Here's a sample.

Jaunting with The Stars My Destination

I don't often read Sci-fi, but Alfred Bester's The Stars My Destination was recommended to me last year (by someone who doesn't often read Sci-fi) and so I tracked a copy down.  Again, for one reason or another, I ended up ordering it from a second-hand bookshop in America, and was delighted I did because it has a wonderful smell to it.

The moment I removed the first layer of packaging, a rich aroma of pipe tobacco wafted out.  And with each layer that I peeled off, the smell got stronger.  It's not that I smoke, but there's something about the smell that reminds me of my grandad and all the tins of Old Flake and Golden Virginia in which he stored nails, screws, bolts, rivets, washers and so on when he was alive.  Every now and then I pick up The Stars My Destination and sniff it, and I travel back through time to his work-shed and I watch him at his band saw or at his lathe.  Sometimes the smell transports me across the Pacific to the bookshop I bought it from.  I imagine the owner sitting at a counter with a pipe in his mouth, surrounded by eccentrically stacked books, or the house of the original owner surrounded by a fug of smoke.

That aside, it is a lovely read.  One of those books I was keen to return to each day.  (Thank goodness, as I've had a couple of duds recently that didn't even make the page 40 mark.)  First published in 1956, it doesn't feel dated in any sense, which perhaps indicates that it will endure for a good time to come.  I hope so.

'In this pulse-quickening novel, Alfred Bester imagines a future in which people "jaunte" a thousand miles with a single thought, where the rich barricade themselves in labyrinths and protect themselves with radioactive hit men - and where an inarticulate outcast is the most valuable and dangerous man alive.'

Gully Foyle is a wonderful character and his quest for vengeance is a compelling story.

In other news, I put the finishing touches to the final edit of The Grease Monkey's Tale today.  Phew!  Off to the printers before long, I imagine.  This certainly isn't Sci-fi.  And quite different to The Snowing and Greening of Thomas Passmore.  More of a Romance-Thriller this time.

Have been listening to Leonard Cohen recently.  Enough to transport me back to undergraduate days at Kingston Polytechnic: staying up through the night, drinking and smoking too much (but never a pipe), walking along the banks of the Thames at sunrise, not having to go to work in the day... and thought I'd track down a 1970's version of Suzanne on YouTube for a little more nostalgia.

The Week That Was

I know this is supposed to be a writer's blog and all that, but art (and music) is a big part of my life and this has been a very visual week, so...

Was delighted to track down a copy of American Painting by Donald Goddard.  Came across this when I was in America last year, but wasn't able to get hold of a copy in Australia.  Finally tracked it down to a wonderful second-hand book-store - Icapsa Used Books in Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA - who arranged to send it to me.  It's a great collection of paintings and I've been browsing through them again these last few days, but one of the most significant for me is Andrew Wyeth's Christina's World. When I was 17, I wrote a piece of poetic-prose that was inspired by this painting and was doubly impressed when the Northampton Chronicle & Echo not only decided to print it but placed it next to a black and white image of the painting.

(10,700,000 Google hits for this painting!)

Have been watching Simon Schama's Power of Art on TV.  Last Sunday, his focus was J.M.W. Turner. I especially like his later paintings, where the figurative drifts into the abstract.  We get some stunning skies here, but the more turbulent ones always remind me of Turner's work.

Also revisited my brother's online gallery recently: Phil Burman.  He's getting ready for an exhibition in the north of England - drawings and sculpture - and had included some new images on his website, so I wanted to see what he was up to.  Thought this the perfect occasion to give a plug here.

What else?  Well, it's turned out to be our olive-picking weekend. The birds (or possums) beat us to it last year, so I was determined they weren't going to have the lot this year.  It's rained both afternoons and, though we ended up saturated, we got both trees picked, and now have to prepare them for bottling.  A fiddly process that includes a fortnight of changing brine daily, but well worth it when we start eating them.

And this morning saw the enterprising Blarney Books host Sisters in Crime: a panel of three crime writers (Kirsty Brooks, Vikki Petraitis and Lindy cameron) talking about their work with Carmel Shute. Enjoyed listening to them very much.  It's interesting to hear  other writers talk about their work, especially when they have a great sense of humour and when this shapes the session - it was a good laugh indeed.