Originally published at tansyrr.com. You can comment here or there.

So, I’m writing steampunk. Years after it was a Thing, and probably way past its popularity bubble. It’s exactly the sort of thing that writers get warned about – you don’t respond to the Current New Thing, you write what you want and BECOME the Next New Thing.

Eh. That sounds so tiring. And besides, steampunk may well be the Next New Thing too. Look at how they’ve been predicting the fall of vampires for the last fifteen years… oddly as it turns out, they’re immortal. Who knew?

The steampunk thing has been creeping up on me for a while now. It’s just so pretty. The art and the costume and sure, there are books, whatever, OMG THE BOOK COVERS. I’ve bought steampunk jewellery, I’ve cooed over steampunk cakes, and I totally want to take the steampunk K9 home with me. It’s such an aesthetically pleasurable phenomenon. Anything that brings back top hats is all right by me.

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Originally published at Mary Victoria. Please leave any comments there.

If any of you are in Auckland this coming Queen’s Birthday weekend, make sure to pop by NZ’s very own Natcon: ‘UnConventional,’ held at the Surrey Hotel between 1-4th June.

Yours truly will be appearing on panels in the company of some absolutely lovely authors. So far my schedule is as follows:

Saturday 3pm ‘Cornwall’ room - “Women in Fantasy & SF” with Helen Lowe, Lyn McConchie and Trudi Canavan

Sunday 9am ‘Sussex’ room  - “Armageddon as Allegory” with Simon Petrie, Phill Simpson, Darusha Wehm and Beaulah Pragg

Sunday 2pm ‘Cornwall’ room – “Geography in SF” with Trudi Canavan, Russell Kirkpatrick and Stephen Minchin

Reading Sunday 4:30 pm in the ‘Dorset’ room

Good God, now I have to decide what to read.

Check out other details on the UnCon website.

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http://www.flickr.com/photos/jentbrave/7285980546/

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You know when you’re just a little off? When things just refuse to go right? That’s me at the moment.

Thursday I went home from work sick. I had a meeting first thing and then an overdue deadline. I sat and worked on the one page briefing for a couple of hours and tinkered and worked on it and thought I’d just get it done then I’d go home. But I could see I had another hour maybe to whip it into shape and I was reallllly not feeling well. The – if I leave this longer, the train may no longer be an option – kind of unwell so I emailed it onto my boss and headed home. C of course was out for lunch with the car so I had to catch the train and then a bus to him to get the car and house keys to get home. And then I slept for 3 hours. As you know, I don’t nap, so that’s never a good sign.

And then I spent a good 24 hours just not on – staring into space, watching terrible (but oh so good) television, answering emails and reading Deadline by Mira Grant. Saturday was more of the same. I was just … not quite right. And doing things like slamming doors on my hand coming out of the bathroom, woke up with a pinched muscle in my back and limited neck movement etc. That ever happen to you? When you just don’t seem to be firing on all cylinders? I dunno if it was flu that never really came on (auto immune diseases are good for one or two things) or being really run down or what.

Sunday I managed to make it to the quilt and craft fair. My usual buddy couldn’t come this year as she broke a bone in her foot last weekend (!) and since the duty was looking like falling to C, his mother stepped in and said she’d be happy to join me. So I met her there and we spent a couple of hours looking at the exhibition and buying fat quarters and having coffee (and I’m really getting married, aren’t I?!) and then I stayed behind to get a few more bits and pieces before heading home. [I bought 3 fat quarters, 6 buttons, a tea cosy book because I am obsessed with hilarious tea cosies, a pattern for a kimono shirt, and bits and pieces - pencils, pins etc]

Then I headed to Helen’s to have a nice catch up with her and Amelia and I’d not been there half an hour when I took a rather dramatic tumble down Helen’s back stairs. I don’t know what happened, I’d hardly moved when I fell forward and then fell down the stairs and kept going. I seem to have managed to have fallen on my whole body – slammed one hand and have taken a chunk out of the palm of my hand so I can’t type well or knit, and scraped the other whilst I landed on my other arm, one knee and both shins copped it, one much worse than the other with a massive scrape and then my ankle and toes which have blood blisters. But I reckon that’s the only thing that stopped me breaking a bone. And we weren’t sure there for a while. I nearly took out Helen’s daughter and as I lay there sprawled on the stairs the look on her face was of such terror I spent all my effort on not crying. And then not fainting. There was blood and a lot of pain and a lot of bruising and I go into shock quite easily.

But after a while, and some ice and bandaids, all was good and I had a cup of tea and cheered right up!And then went home to enjoy Eurovision. OMG I loved Turkey and Ireland so so much.

Today I hobbled into work to find much of my team had either been off sick, were off sick or went home sick. And I found a physio in the CBD to look at my neck/back. The city is pretty convenient for having access to things (better than either of the other jobs I had this year). And I got a new pillow, which might have been some of the problem. And I need to address stress, and ignoring headaches. and peering at the laptop like I’m doing right now. And probably it’s time for bed.

I hope you’re fairing better than me right now.

Mirrored from Champagne and Socks.

Originally published at tansyrr.com. You can comment here or there.

Many spoilers abound for the plots & endings of Soul Music, Hogfather, Thief of Time by Terry Pratchett

Rereading all three of the Susan Sto Helit (or Susan Death) books was something I had been greatly looking forward to. I’ve always enjoyed Susan as a character even when I didn’t especially love the books she featured in – Soul Music, for instance, was never a favourite of mine, though the animated version of it is dear to my heart (funnily enough it DOES work better with a soundtrack of relevant examples of the music that the story is about), Hogfather is one I’ve often found bewildering with moments of occasional joy, and I never remember anything about Thief of Time at all.

This time around, I enjoyed all three rather better than I had in the past, but in reading them specifically for this blogging series, I couldn’t help noticing that, well. Considering what a popular and beloved character Susan is, it’s interesting what a small space she takes up in each of the books.

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We’ve sent all our forthcoming books to the printers, we’re in the process of making our lists and checking them twice –> Twelfth Planet Press is off to Natcon 2012/Continuum 8 in Melbourne. We shall be in the dealers room all weekend! You can also find us at:

Twelfth Planet Press Hour on Friday Night – its a gold coin donation day at Continuum so open to all and sundry!

Ever wondered how your favorite Twelve Planet collection would taste like in cupcake form? Then come along to the Twelfth Planet Cocktail hour, to celebrate the launch of the newest Twelve Planets, Through Splintered Walls, by Kaaron Warren, and Cracklescape by Margo Lanagan, plus the new TPP novella Salvage by Jason Nahrung. All your other favourite Twelve Planets will be there and we’ll also be making a surprise announcement!

Each book will be lovingly interpreted as a cupcake by master baker, Terri Sellen. Your cocktail choice is entirely your own…

Galactic Suburbia will record an episode live over the weekend,

Embiggen Books Event, 5pm Saturday

A book launch with a difference! Come join host Ian Mond, TPP publisher Alisa Krasnostein and TPP authors as they launch the Twelve Planets into space, via a live podcast from Embiggen Books. Find out what goes in to putting together this acclaimed series of boutique collections. Hijinks will undoubtedly ensue.

A Stitch In Time Travel Preview
Come and help beta test a pattern from the upcoming new craft ebook from Twelfth Planet Press.
Crochet hooks optional.

Mirrored from Champagne and Socks.

Twelve months ago I got a direct message on twitter that said, more or less, send me an email RE the job we discussed. I think it’s the only message I’ve ever received on twitter that made me cry with relief, ’cause it meant there was a chance of getting the hell out of my old job.

It wasn’t just that my old day-job was bad – I’d worked bad jobs before. My old day-job actually went past bad and delved into the level of seriously toxic. There were only six people in the office and they were all at war with one another, and the manager had never really figured out why they’d hired me. When I signed my employment agreement there was a big empty space under my job description, and they never actually got around to filling all that empty space in.

Occasionally I’d answer phones, or make deliveries to clients. Those were good days. On the bad days I’d update my blog and hang out in twitter, trying to ignore the cold war being fought between management and the sales team.

I’ve never wanted to leave a day-job so badly as I wanted to leave this one. It was the first paying job I’d found after two years of unemployment – something that should have been a relief – but somehow it just seemed even worse. I lived life like a clenched fist, perpetually angry. I wanted to break things and get broken in return. Chuck Palahniuk novels made serious fucking sense to me.

It still seems totally bizarre that I went from all that to…well, the job I have now.

‘Cause the job I have now, it’s like winning the fucking lottery. Last Friday I was having a bad morning: Thursday night had seen a handful of small emergencies that robbed me sleep; I slept through my alarm and rushed to work late; people on public transport were grating on my nerves. The part of me that’s still carrying around all the anger I built up between 2008 and 2011 started coming to the surface, all raw nerve endings and grinding teeth.

Then I made it the office and things got better. I talked to co-workers who are smart and interesting and, to my constant surprise, people I’m happy to call friends. I did my job, planned future projects, answered email. By lunch-time I couldn’t be angry any more. I just didn’t have it in me.

Twelve months ago I answered the message I’d gotten on twitter and engaged short exchange of emails that resulted in a job offer. I remember being twitchy about saying yes – it was casual work, an eighteen-month contract, and despite the hell of my old day-job I was really afraid of being unemployed again after the contract ended. In the end I trusted my gut, and my gut was screaming get the fuck out with everything it had to give.

I’m amazed, given how often I was blogging back then, that none of this played out here. The first reference I can find to the whole thing was a short post about tenterhooks, and I didn’t mention it again until I was ready to give notice at my old job a few weeks later. That resulted in me posting this:

I put in my notice at the dreaded dayjob today. In eight days time, I shall be free. Free I tell you!

I mean, sure, there’s a new dayjob coming, but I’m fairly sure I wont actually dread this one.

I remember thinking, at the time, that not-dreading a dayjob was basically as good as it got. I’ve never been so happy to be proven wrong.

I still don’t really know how I landed my current job – near as I can tell, it came out of a discussion about ebook pricing at a convention – but I’m pretty sure that I’m one of the luckiest bastards alive to be working where I’m working and doing what I’m doing. I just wanted to take a moment to remember that.

Originally published at PeterMBall.com. Please leave any comments there.

Laurel Nakadate's second film, The Wolf Knife, is the examination of two teenage girls and their sexuality, caught between that of an adult, and that of a child.

A video artist and photographer, Nakadate's The Wolf Knife is a film that falls under mumblecore. Shot cheaply on video camera, and featuring to unknown actresses, it has that cheap, DIY ethic that a lot of mumblecore does, and it is both the success and failure of the film. Success because the two actresses, Chrissy (Christina Kolozsvary) and June (Julie Potratz) embody the awakening and confused sexuality that is the centre of the film, and failure because the editing, camera work, and just general style of the film leave a lot to be desired. To be honest, the kindest thing that you could say about it was that it was amateuristic. It's a shame, especially when given that a look around Nakadate's work outside film are interesting and often quite beautiful, in a dirty, voyeuristic fashion.



As a film, however, it's simply too long, going at least twenty minutes longer than it needs. I do understand why it was done, to provide a sense of closure to Chrissy and June's relationship, but it wasn't necessary in my mind--the film worked on its naturalism, and to provide such a sense of closure, of tying up loose ends, went against the piece to me. The acting, outside the two young girls, is uniformly awful, and the dialogue was just as bad. Silence, such an important thing in the film, was even moreso because it allowed you to escape the weakness of the script, or the improvisation--but unfortunately, for the most part, the silence of the film did not convey much.

I was, at the end of the film, a bit give and take about it. The sexuality of the girls was excellent, but it didn't make a film, and in the end, I had to fall on the side that the film itself wasn't very good. The truth is, it's just poorly made, for all the DIY, cheap auteurism. My opinion of that, after flipping around on Nakadate's site, was reinforced, given how much I liked of the still images she had, and the sexuality that she explored there. It was just a real shame that her skills in film--skills relating to craft--were still in development.

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