Where Has A Year Gone?

It's hard to believe that it has almost been one year since I last wrote anything on my unofficially-official blog... so for the one or two people who may regularly follow my rants and updates, I humbly apologise. Life has been 'interesting' over the last nine or so months: losing friends, gaining friends, moving, constantly changing priorities, new work opportunities. Life gets in the road of hobbies like writing, and let's face it, writing is, and probably forever will be just a hobby for yours truly.

My motivation to write has wained. Writer's block mainly, but I've also become more in demand, meaning even if I had the motivation to write, I probably wouldn't have the time to do it. That doesn't mean that I haven't had anything published since last year - actually I've had four or five pieces of fiction get out in the wild, primarily AntipodeanSF, but also a little micro-fiction:

'Switch' - AntipodeanSF #146 (August 2010)
'Depopulation' - AntipodeanSF #144 (June 2010)
'Descend The Shades Of Night' - FLASHSHOT (May 2010)
'Aloha or Bust' - AntipodeanSF #139 (January 2010)
'Dog-E' - AntipodeanSF #138 (December 2009)

I guess that's, what, thirteen individual pieces of fiction published so far? Thirteen is a nice number, but I'm definitely not done yet.

2009 Aurealis Awards

The Aurealis Awards for 2009 are here and it's great to see the range of local writing talent on display - even yours truly had a couple of nominations. 'Jack Austin: Xeno-Hunter' and 'Interrogation 8' were nominated for best Australian Science Fiction short story. Good luck to all the finalists!

'Dog-E' - AntipodeanSF #138

For those who are familiar with my work, you will know that I enjoy writing flash fiction for AntipodeanSF. With that said, readers can find my latest story 'Dog-E' out and about in issue #138. Enjoy.

I Can't Stand Halloween

What the hell is it with Halloween? When did it suddenly take-off here in Australia? I'm all for kids being kids, and their right to have some fun, but is it just me, or does Halloween need to take a hike. As far as I'm concerned the whole popularity of Halloween here is just a perpetuation of the continual Americanisation of our fine country. Halloween might appear harmless and just a bit of fun, but in reality it is symptomatic of the erosion of our culture, and everything we embrace as proud Australians. We don’t need another completely pointless American influence on our country, there’s far too many as it stands.

Maybe I'm just a cranky pants, but my main beef with Halloween is the fact that you and I, and every person who lives on a suburban street, has to participate in this ridiculous festivity. We aren't wilful participants either. We all get dragged into Halloween purely because we might reside in a dwelling where lollies (or candy for the Americans) can be obtained at the threat of a 'trick'. If you want to celebrate Christmas or Festivus, at least you can do it in the privacy of your own home well away from everyone else. Halloween you can't escape. Unless you want to turn off all your lights and hide, or do what I did and post a sign on your door stating that you have no interest in Halloween, kids are going to come to your house and interrupt your peace and quiet.

Here’s the sign that I posted on my front door:



Sure, I’m a prick, but that’s the way I am when I feel strongly. When all is said and done, I’m afraid that the uptake of Halloween in this country seems inevitable. It’s unstoppable... like a Terminator.

Tenth Story Published - 'Aloha or Bust'

There has been a lot of change in my life over the last month, including a few important milestones - from a writing perspective, the publication of my tenth piece of original fiction is the latest. If all goes to plan, 'Aloha or Bust' should be appearing in AntipodeanSF #139 sometime in January, and is a tiny snapshot of interplanetary politics from the point of a ships Captain.

Sure, ten pieces short stories doesn't sound like a whole lot in the grand scheme of things, but frankly, that's about ten more than I ever expected to get published back when I launched into this caper a couple of years ago. It's been an interesting 'hobby', and one that I haven't been able to devote a lot of time to recently, however this should hopefully change in the coming months.

I've been pondering exactly where I should go with my writing. I'm more of an instant gratification type of guy, so I find the long haul of grinding out a novel to be painful. Everyone thinks they have a novel in them, a select few actually do, and most of those people fall by the wayside. My first novel is sitting in the metaphoric cupboard drawer in second draft - every time I pick it up I can't put it down, I love the story I've written, but it's ultimately the quality of the writing that shakes my confidence, and I'm not entirely sure this is a story that a wider audience would enjoy. The long game, a.k.a. novel writing, may not be my ultimate calling. I love the short game, a.k.a. short fiction - writing funny anecdotal stories that people can enjoy almost immediately. That's more my bag.

For those interested:

'Aloha or Bust' - AntipodeanSF #139 (January 2010)
'Dog-E' - AntipodeanSF #138 (December 2009)
'Interrogation #8' - AntipodeanSF #131 (April 2009)
'Jack Austin: Xeno-Hunter' - AntipodeanSF #130 (March 2009)
'Payload' (poem) - AntipodeanSF #125 (October 2008)
'Hemodialysis' - Skive Magazine #6 (December 2007)
'One Bullet' - FLASHSHOT (November 2007)
'The Cloud' - Twisted Tongue #7 (August 2007)
'Supreme Hunter' - Twisted Tongue #7 (August 2007)
'Ringtone' - Ripples Magazine #9 (July 2007)

Dog-E

A brand new story of mine called 'Dog-E' should be hitting an issue of AntipodeanSF in the coming months - hopefully before the end of the year, but who knows. Yeah, it's another flash fiction story, but that's all I really get time to write at the moment. The title and the first three quarters of the story sound a bit like the opening scene to a Disney kids animation, but as anyone who follows my work would know, there's a always an interesting twist to the story in the last couple of paragraphs. Stay tuned for info on a publication date!

Beam Me Up Gets An Interrogation

Thanks to Paul over at Beam Me Up for reading my story 'Interrogation #8' on air as part of the program back on July 11. It's great to get a bit of exposure outside of Australia, as well as hear your words outside of your own head. Good job and I'd certainly be happy to have any future work appear as part of the show.

Interrogation of AntipodeanSF & Beam Me Up Podcast

Another flash fiction story of mine has made it out into the wild. 'Interrogation 8' can be found in AntipodeanSF #131 (April 2009):

http://pandora.nla.gov.au/pan/10063/20090505-0003/www.antisf.com.au/the-stories/interrogation-8-by-jamie-richter.html

Speaking of which, Paul over at Beam Me Up, which is a sci-fi podcast that originates from station WRFR in Maine, has expressed interest in reading Interrogation on air as part of the program in the coming weeks.

Jack Austin: Xeno-Hunter Does AntipodeanSF

Wow it's been over three months since my last post. Not a lot of writing has been done in that time - instead I've spent most of this time adjusting to some pretty big changes in my life. All these changes have been positive.

As promised, my latest short story to be published is Jack Austin: Xeno-Hunter in issue #130 of AntipodeanSF. This site has some great local writers and it is an honour to have a few of my stories appear on the site over the coming months.

http://pandora.nla.gov.au/pan/10063/20090405-0000/www.antisf.com.au/the-stories/jack-austin-xeno-hunter.html

The link will probably only last a month, but I think the stories get archived to the National Archive...

A New Year and a New Story

It's 2009, and a new story of mine called 'Interrogation #8' should be appearing in AntipodeanSF mid-year. I'll keep you posted.

Payload And Jack Austin Go Antipodean

Growing up, I used to think that poetry was, well, for individuals of questionable sexuality. Things have changed over the last decade and a half. Now that I'm a little older, and hopefully a little wiser, I've come to realise the power of a great poem - and the challenge of crafting a great poem.

My first published poem, 'Payload', a sci-fi themed work revolving around a female Coalition Recon Marine on guard duty of an alien artefact, should be hitting AntipodeanSF #125 mid-October.

Additionally, 'Jack Austin: Xeno-Hunter' will also be appearing in an upcoming edition of AntipodeanSF - tentatively scheduled for Issue #130 in mid-March 2009.

More details when the publish dates get a little closer.

Damn You J.J. Abrams!

A few posts back I mentioned an old screenplay (teleplay) called 'The Mind's Eye' that I had written for an Australian show called Two Twisted... well, I have a funny story about it. Well, it's not that funny, it's damn annoying actually.

I've been working on and off during the last year to adapt 'The Mind's Eye' into a novella - it's taken close to one hundred hours and is somewhere in excess of 15000 words. It's pretty damn close to finished, and it's taken a lot of time and effort. Now as the title of this post alludes to, the bit where J.J. Abrams comes in is the fact that I was flicking through channels the other night and spotted something that looked very familiar. The show was called Fringe, and the scene that looked familiar involved a scientist extracting a death image from the retina of a cadaver using a scientific process that was almost exactly like what I described in my story The Mind's Eye... right down to the multiple flashes into the eye to build an image matrix.

Now I'll admit that the whole idea of extracting the last image a person witnessed before death is not a new idea, but the way it appeared on television looked so much like the technique I had imagined, and put onto the page. It's safe to say that I got pretty annoyed. Thinking you have a fresh idea in this day and age is pretty naive, but to see it realised in front of your eyes is another story.

The questions that now spring to mind are: Will I ever get my work published after this went to air? As soon as someone reads it, are they going to think I lifted it straight from Fringe? Was all that work for nothing?

If you know of anyone that was working for Bryan Brown’s production company, and they are now working on Fringe as a writer, let me know!

Back From The Dead

I've returned... ready and raring to go.

I know that it's been close to four months since my last post, but that doesn't mean that I've been avoiding writing. Truth be told, I haven't written a lot of fiction in that time, but I have been doing something semi-productive. Anyone that knows me well enough would know that I love film - I've always wanted to start a film news/review website, and after a chance encounter with an old mate from university who now runs a few of his own websites, he got me interested in taking the plunge.

I present you with www.youseenthat.com!

Okay, it's pretty basic at this stage, but I plan on working on it some more when I can get some time off. Writing a full SQL/PHP driven website from scratch isn't a five minute job. Just don't expect to find your typical, well-structured reviews on YouSeenThat.com - my reviews are very much stream-of-consciousness. Whatever comes into my head as I tap away on the keyboard. I try to adhere to basic review structure where possible, but they tend to go off the rails at times. I guess that's the fun of writing for your own website... I can write whatever the hell I like.

Anyway, enough of the website plug - I've actually put the website on the backburner for the last few weeks. Instead of writing reviews, I've really tried getting back into reading and writing fiction. At the moment I'm slowly getting through Clive Barker's 'Books of Blood', and I must admit that old Clive has really got me excited about writing short fiction again. When I say 'slowly', I like to read a story in one hit, so it's a matter of finding an uninterrupted hour to polish off one of Clive's amazing stories.

I'd kill for even half the talent of a guy like Barker. Well, kill again.

At the moment I've been getting back into the rhythm of 'the craft' with some flash fiction - under 1000 words in length, for the uninitiated. I've mainly been going through my work folder, pouring over the innumerable half-realised plot ideas salvaged from incomplete stories.

One story that eventuated, Jack Austin: Xeno-Hunter, was spawned from two simple lines of dialogue that popped into my head about a year ago. I ended-up jotting the lines down and saving them in a Word document on the off chance I'd ever use them.

The two lines of dialogue:

“What happened to your last cameraman?”
“Screw that. What the hell happened to your last host?”

Going under the original title of 'ZMB-TV' (Zombie TV), the story was initially going to be about a fast-talking anti-hero who finds himself followed around by a reality TV crew during a zombie apocalypse. Instead, the story ended-up going in more of a Sci-Fi direction. While the opening lines of dialogue are similar, only more fleshed out, the central character is now an Australian alien hunter who is forced to tolerate a reality TV crew in order to pay off a series of lawsuits after a his chain of intergalactic petting zoos went belly-up after an incident with a kid and a carnivorous midget pony... the only problem is that old Jack has a hard time keeping his TV crews alive long enough to get an episode in the can.

I limited myself to 500 words for 'Jack Austin: Xeno-Hunter', mainly to ease myself back in - plus I suspect that the story would have lost a little of its punch if it were any longer than, say, 1000 words.

And how goes the novel? I finished the second draft before I went away to Europe, and I haven't really looked at it since. If I were to be completely honest, I'm going to keep it locked away in the cupboard for another few months, and then look at doing a third draft - I'd like to concentrate on improving my writing before taking another stab at what is a very lengthy and time intensive process. There's nothing wrong with the story structure, the original screenplay was very tight and a great guide for writing a fast-paced novel, I’m just still working on developing my own writing style. I suspect that more reading and writing is the key.

Anyway, I hope that the later half of 2008 will be a little more productive than the half that preceded it. My aim is to double that Publication List of mine by this time next year.

Still Alive

I'm still alive: back from a vacation in Europe and ready to wage war against the blank page, or more accurately, the blank word processor screen. More soon.

New (Old) Story

I took a few unplanned days off of work recently, mainly to get my head in order. It's surprising how happy and productive I become when I don't have to go to work - I actually got to finish an old short story that I started almost two years ago. It was actually the second short story I started, just after Ringtone.

The Passenger is the first of possibly several short speculative fiction stories set in a modern day Australia, all based around genetic engineering, civil war and the fight for identity. Each story gives a little more insight into the Australia of the future, and is told from a slightly different perspective. My plan is to try and get The Passenger published in a reputable Australian speculative fiction magazine - at least that's my plan. Maybe it won't make it past the editors, but either way, hopefully you will get to read The Passenger sometime soon.

As far as the novel goes, it is still progressing slowly.

Things In The Back Of The Drawer

I’ve decided to put the first draft of my novel 'in the drawer', so to speak, and leave it there for a few weeks. I don't want to see it, and I certainly don't even what to think about it. Sure, I might lose three or four weeks of writing time, however, the time to clear my mind and come back to the story with a new perspective is definitely worth it in the long run.

Fortunately, when I did put my novel back 'in the drawer', I happened to stumble across an old story I wrote about a year ago called 'The Mind's Eye'. The story was originally an idea adapted for the Australia TV series 'Two Twisted', back when they were advertising for new material for a second season. Ultimately the ‘Mind’s Eye’ was rejected along with a couple of other stories I submitted - I'm not entirely sure which is more disheartening, having your story rejected, or having it rejected from a shithouse TV series like Two Twisted; probably the latter.

I sat down and reread the story - it may be considered a little clichéd in part, but I certainly enjoyed it enough to spend some the last week belting-out some of the dints in the bodywork. It's a novelette by definition, running at over 10000 words at the moment, however, I hope to find a market for the story. Novelette's are always a little awkward - too large for your average short story magazine, too small to be taken seriously as anything else.

Probably need another couple of weeks on and off to perfect the story, then I’ll look at magazines for publishing.

Stephen King's 'On Writing'

I recently picked-up an audio book copy of Stephen King's book called 'On Writing'... and I would highly recommend this to anyone interested in creative writing. Probably would have made a good Christmas gift, oh well, there's always next year. Reading the physical book is great, but listening to King tell his story, in his own words, was definitely worth the price of admission.

Essentially the book is half autobiographical, half instructional guide on improving your creative writing. The autobiographic chapters, while heavy-going at times, gives the reader a good understanding of where King has come from as a writer, and provides us with an insight into the life experiences that have inspired King's stories. The second half of the book, King's guide 'on writing' was equally as interesting. This is the reason you are reading the book in the first place. I wouldn't say there was a great deal of information in those chapters that one could call 'revolutionary', a fact that King himself admits frequently. However, these chapters are full of bullshit-free, commonsense, instinctual tips and observations from a guy who has spent the last forty years as a writer. He must be doing something right, surely?

One of the most interesting ideas presented by King was the concept that you shouldn't have to plot out the story - simply put the characters in a situation or environment, and allow their own instincts/characteristics guide the story. Simple but thought-provoking.

I’d recommend the book to any creative writers out there – after finishing it, I felt recharged and enthusiastic about my writing. I believe that I’m certainly on the right track; however, there is a long road ahead. Will I succeed? Will I fail? Who knows? I’m done asking those questions. I don't have those answers. Regardless, Stephen King’s ‘On Writing’ had given me a new appreciation of the journey.

Stephen King's 'On Writing', available at Amazon.

Novel Progress: Christmas Greetings

Merry Christmas (for yesterday) and a happy New Year... and all that bullshit. We don't celebrate Christmas all that vigorously in my household, and given some of personal factors, including the illness of family members - 2007 has been especially low-key. Pretty much nonexistent. Just another day.

I decided to use Christmas Day to continue belting the first draft of the novel into shape - Christmas Day, Boxing Day and New Years Day are more or less the only real holidays I will get off over the next few months. The occasional public holiday here and there, but that's about it. Sure, I do get a couple of weekends to myself per month, where I don't get dragged into my real job on a Saturday or Sunday, but with so many things to do in the space of a normal weekend, my writing seems to get somewhat neglected.

Anyway. No real progress on any short fiction since my last update. I did start toying with an old fantasy/sci-fi/post apocalyptic short story for a few hours, however I decided to leave it on the backburner for the moment and concentrate on the novel.

The novel is around the 45000 word mark at the moment - it's on the cusp of being a long novella, or a short novel. With additional editing, fleshing-out ideas and spot-welding, it will definitely fall on the side of a short novel. 50000 - 60000 words as an estimate. Word count isn't all that important, as long as you have used as many words as necessary to tell your story.

'Ringtone' On Your Mobile

My first published story, Ringtone, has recently been given a second life... coming at you on your mobile phone.

Matt Ward from Skive Magazine has been working on an associated site called skiveflash. For those interested, skiveflash is a flash (250-1,000 words) fiction site designed for users of mobile phones. Despite the fact that the site is still fairly new, I couldn't pass-up the chance to have people read Ringtone on their mobile phones. The irony.

Hopefully they aren't driving when they read it.

Glass shards at the ready.

Novel Progress: Initial Adaptation Complete

Last night I completed the initial adaptation of my novel "UC", taking it from screenplay to something resembling a novel. Only took a few months, and that was the easy part. Now I have to go back over the entire thing and craft something that resembles a first draft. Actually more like a second draft, technically. Time to take some of the clunky movie dialogue and pad it out a little, make it a little more human... all without losing the fast-paced nature of the story. This part is going to be even more difficult than getting the initial adaptation on paper.

Oh well. Another three or four months and let's see what I can turn out.