Merry Christmas!

It’s the time of year again! Hard to believe how quickly Christmas has come around again.

This year has had a lot of ups and downs for me. I’ll do a fuller retrospective post at some point, but for now, I’m doing good. I’m looking forward to a quiet Christmas with my family and friends, and I’m feeling positive about the future.

Thanks to all of you who have been a part of my life this year. To my friends, who help, support, and distract me when I need it, and with whom I have so many fun times. To my family, who love and are loved. To my readers, who make all the work I do in my off-time worth it, and who make me smile even though we’ve never met.

Merry Christmas to you all. May you enjoy whatever holiday traditions you observe, whether they be religious, familial, social, or just relaxing (or all of the above!). Have a wonderful time; I will talk with you all again soon.

Riding natural disasters

I wrote this post in the early months of last year, and for some reason, never posted it. I can’t remember why! I suspect I got sick or distracted, and just never came back to it. So I thought I’d share it with you all now, because the sentiment is still true, even if a year has passed since it was originally penned.

People are amazing. It’s good to remember this.

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Those of you who have seen the news lately will know that Queensland, Australia has had a rough start to the year (2011). La Nina is apparently to blame, bringing violent and wet weather to batter the eastern coast of the country.

First, there were the floods. After several months of rain (note: when I moved here in 2008, everyone was complaining about the 7-year-long drought), a whole heap of rain piled on at once, and most of the state flooded.

I was lucky. My home was untouched – the flood waters didn’t come anywhere near my suburb. I was evacuated out of the office, though, and wound up working from home until the office lost all power. It was two weeks before we were back in the building again, due to the basement parking levels being filled with water (and spilled diesel and who knows what other nasties).

It was a frustrating time. The coverage was heartbreaking, with so many people in the area affected, but nowhere near me. I wanted to go help but we were being told to stay at home and stay off the roads. Being so far from everything, it would have been crazy to try driving all that way, so I stayed where I was (plus I still wasn’t recovered from being sick the week before).

A lot of people were far more determined than me. When I say ‘a lot’, what I mean is not just hundreds, but thousands. That’s how many turned out to help – with moving people’s stuff to higher ground, the evacuation centres, and later the cleanup. A friend of mine went to try to volunteer, and she was turned away every time, along with hundreds or even thousands of others. On the news coverage, there was an image of an old lady helping to clean up the mud in a brand new pair of wellies/rubber boots, bought specially so she could volunteer.

The sheer wealth of goodwill and giving that came out of that disaster is stunning. People drove for hours from unaffected areas to offer whatever they could. Those who were turned away were disappointed and frustrated that they couldn’t do more. I know how they felt – I wanted to be out there, even if my health wouldn’t have stood up to much.

We offered the spare rooms in our house up to anyone who was out of their homes due to flood damage – the best we could do, though we’re too far from the city and flood damage for anyone to take us up on the offer (we assume that’s the reason!). Every place we registered had hundreds of rooms on offer – again, the generosity is astounding.

Having lived in a few different places, I can’t honestly say that that would have happened everywhere. Australia isn’t particularly known for a culture of cooperative community (that I know of), but what I saw over the past few weeks shows that the spirit of helping out neighbours in need is alive and thriving here on this inhospitable island. I’ve become more jaded about people than I like over the past few years, and recent events have done a lot to restore my faith in human nature.

No-one forced those people to help out, psychologically, physically, or otherwise. They were there helping because “How can we not?” As if there was no other right, logical thing to be doing.

I used to share a house with someone who didn’t believe in altruism, as if it was a myth like Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy. I wonder what she would have thought about this.

Then, just as things were calming down after the floods, the cyclone warning came in. Not for this area, thank goodness, but for the northern part of the state. A cyclone worse than any storm in the last century or so, and more powerful than the hurricane Katrina that flattened New Orleans. It hit an area that was nearly wiped out five years ago by a much smaller cyclone.

The destruction is awful, but the people were amazing. They were sensible, even though they were scared. They did what they were supposed to do, got to safety, and rode it out. Entire towns were flattened, and I think only one person died. One. And that’s because he was in a cyclone on a boat.

Now, those people are picking up the shattered remnants of homes and businesses, and working out how to rebuild. Some only just got finished rebuilding after the last big cyclone blew through. I saw one woman on the news saying, “Oh, we’ll build it again. We did it before and we’ll do it now.” She was crying as she looked at the wreck of her son’s room, missing its roof, covered in rainwater, and knowing just how much work was waiting for her. But she’d just heard a storm tearing the house apart over her head, so I’ll forgive her for being somewhat emotional.

I have great admiration for these people. Perhaps some of them have no choice – their lives are in tatters and they have to rebuild. But they approach it with such calmness and strength. I respect that. And I appreciate them for restoring my faith that people can do the right, good thing when it’s needed. In the current world climate, I think we all need reminders like this.

Creative Writing Group dates for 2012

I’ve just had confirmation of my writing group’s dates for next year! The Brisbane Square Library is an awesome venue: right in the centre of the city, with loads of room for everyone and friendly staff.

Better yet: I was able to get all of the dates that I asked for! I haven’t had to shuffle any of them around. How fantastic is that? So now the group is regularly on the second Friday of every month, like clockwork. (Coincidentally, I’m writing a steampunk thing at the moment that involves a lot of clockwork. Fun!)

Now those are set, I can work out the monthly write-in dates and we’re set for the year! Whoo!

I’ve added the dates for next year to the Creative Writing Group page. Check there for updates, or feel free to add yourself to the update list if you want reminders of when the meetings are!

Hope to see you there. 🙂

RedFest talk confirmed

After some back and forth with the organisers of the Redland Spring Festival following my initial squeeing post, I am a confirmed part of the festival program. Terrifying!

I now have my own Writer’s Corner, and a slot to do a talk (4-5:30, 10th Sept). The subject is ‘online publishing’. Now all I have to do is figure out what I’m talking about (it’s a very broad topic!) and try not to get too nervous. I’ve started getting some notes together, from a session I did with my writing group and some more recent material I’ve come across.

Fingers crossed, it should all come together nicely. Less than two weeks to go. Wish me luck (and that people turn up to join in)!

RedFest Guest Appearance

Through some local contacts, I’ve been asked to do a ‘writing corner’ at the Redland Spring Festival in September (RedFest). I’m not entirely sure of all the details yet, but I’ll have the space for a period of time. It has been heavily suggested that I do some kind of talk/info session about writing.

Wow. I do little talks for my writing groups fairly often these days, but this is (even more) public! And very intimidating. But very awesome.

What do I do the talk on? What do I wear? (Shut up, I’m a girl, y’know.) I should sort out business cards. Or bookmarks. Or something with my links/writing on to hand out. (Don’t want to miss an opportunity to pimp myself, after all.)

I’ll have to see if I can bribe my writing group folks to come along and keep me sane. And anyone else I can get to come! You! Are you in south-east Queensland? Then you have to come!

Can’t wait. I’m a little bit terrified. I think I should go lie down now.

Expounding

I’m not very good at updating this blog regularly. When things get busy, it’s usually the first to fall by the wayside! I tend to come along and splurge a few posts, and then focus on something else for a while.

I would like to change this. I’m not entirely sure how just yet, but I’m thinking about setting myself some time every week to write specifically for this blog.

I haven’t been creating the kind of chronicle for Starwalker that I did with the Apocalypse Blog. The journey of writing Starwalker is a rollercoaster – it’s crazy and fun and hard, and I’d like to capture some of that here. If only so I can look back and say ‘wow, I was nuts!’

I’ve also been giving talks about writing lately. I had a guest pull out of my writing group meeting this month, and put together some emergency notes so that we had something else to talk about! It was actually great fun (and I learned a lot!), but it would be nice if all this material I’m collecting didn’t just sit in a notebook somewhere.

I have plenty of stuff that I can write up. I have already started on the notes from my writing group (though assembling rambling notes into a coherent post is harder than it looks!), and will hopefully have something post-worthy in the next week. On top of that, there’s always the occasional vomit of information that has previously lived within the confines of my skull, like the recent posts on why and how to critique fiction.

Reviews. I would like to do more reviews, too. I often feel opinionated enough to write them, but finding time to do it is always the trick. Plus, I’ve promised at least one fellow writer that I would do one on their work! Sheesh. Get to it, slacker.

Perhaps I’ll try to post every other week, with a different type of post each week. That sounds terribly organised! Considering that I’m struggling to keep up with Starwalker most weeks, that is frequent enough to get me back into the habit of writing for this blog. Who knows, maybe I’ll throw in more posts as well!

So I have a plan. I have lots of things to write about. Now all I need is some time in my life, and I’m set! Watch this space, people – I will try to make it active and interesting!

Starwalker: review happiness!

It has been a while since Starwalker was reviewed: there were a few when the blogfic had just started, which are awesome. Back then, it was shiny and new, just setting out in the world, like Starry herself. Until now, there haven’t been any reviews of the whole first book, though.

Then I found out that the lovely Zoe E. Whitten had opted to review the first book of Starwalker. How cool is that?

What touched me even more were the comments on the review. Colour me a happy camper.

Her review is also available on Starwalker’s Web Fiction Guide listing. Go check it out!

Brisbane Writer’s Festival

I started writing this a while ago, but then work exploded and I’ve had a hell of a time just keeping up. So. Let’s try to get this finished while I have a few spare minutes.

My third Brisbane Writer’s Festival happened at the beginning of September (a few weeks ago now). I almost didn’t go this year (I was supposed to be down in Melbourne for WorldCon), but when work made it impossible to go, I wound up at the festival instead.

I’m glad I went. Lots of  interesting talks, and I wound up buying a handful of books – mostly non-fiction for research purposes. The people I went to see talk were all well worth seeing, and gave me plenty of food for thought. I even paid for tickets for some of the talks – which I’ve never bothered to do before – and I don’t regret it.

The festival was not as good this year as it has been before. This is mostly because of the aforementioned WorldCon, and also because of the Melbourne Writer’s Festival. All three events happened on the same weekend, and that means that a lot of potential guests went down to the events in Melbourne, especially those in the scifi/fantasy genres. Great for them, not so great for those genre-lovers stuck back in Brisbane.

We had a full complement of authors anyway, mostly crime, romance and non-fiction of various stripes. I saw Michael Robotham and Val McDermid in a couple of different talks, and they’re well worth seeing. Sensible, entertaining, and honest. I’d sit and have a drink with them any time (sadly, I didn’t have time at the festival, but next time!).

I picked up Robotham’s Shatter, and thoroughly enjoyed it. May do a more complete review if/when I get some time. I will say that the level of craft displayed in it was much higher than I was expecting, and I will happily pick up another of his books when I’m done with my current list (I’m waiting for a friend to finish The Suspect so she can lend it to me, before I go hunting for another one).

I also plan to pick up one of Val’s books and see what they’re like, too. She’s a great character and I don’t doubt that at least some of that has leeched into her work.

I bought a handful of books that I wouldn’t have otherwise picked up, some of them random non-fiction that just looked interesting (like one about particular mental disorders, and another about how the brain heals itself). The festival was also a great chance to hang out with friends and meet new writers.

The Brisbane Writer’s Festival is held at the Queensland State Library, where the Queensland Writer’s Centre has its new offices (they moved earlier this year). I finally managed to pop in and say hello, and because I’m a member of the QWC, I got a tour and a card, and free drinks in their Writer’s Lounge. My friend and I recuperated between talks there, and met a string of writers, all coming to do the same as us.

So, overall, a good weekend in good company. Hectic and exhausting, between trains and running to talks and all the rest, but well worth it. I am sorry I missed the craziness of WorldCon when it was visiting so close, but I had a great time anyway. Looking forward to next year’s offerings already!

HELP: Texan Cat Needs Home

I don’t usually post things like this, but this is an extraordinary case, so here we go.

A very good friend of mine living in the US is in an awful position. He has had to move and the cat he left behind needs a new home, or he faces being put down.

Here’s Dave’s story about his little fuzzy boy, Butterball:

Butterball is a fluffball, two-year-old grey tom, currently living in the Sherman-Denison area of Texas. I adopted him as a kitten, and he was a part of my family for a year and a half.

He grew up as an indoor cat with two others, and is well socialised with other felines. He’s naturally friendly and inquisitive, especially after he gets to know someone. He loves to play, often with great enthusiasm, but has never dealt with children before.

About seven months ago, he accidentally got out of the house. We searched for him, but he wasn’t seen for two days. We still don’t know what happened to him in that time.

When he came back, he had a mangled front paw and continuously mewled in pain.  It took over a month of care, during which time he suffered uncontrollable bowels and a fever, but he finally pulled through. 

Now, it’s almost impossible to see where his paw was hurt. Also, where he was wary of strangers before, now he’s friendlier and seeks company more than he used to.

When my fiancée and I moved, we had to leave him in her mother’s care, as we sadly couldn’t take him with us to our new home. My fiancée’s mother, Marsha, had cats of her own and could provide him with a good home. 

Now she is being forced to move and can only keep one cat.  Sadly, this will not be Butterball. If he doesn’t find a new home, he will be put in a pound or simply let go in the countryside.  In a pound, his chances of getting a home aren’t good. As an adult cat with a plain appearance, he will lose out to younger, cuter cats when it comes to an adoption. If he’s not homed, they will put him down. In the countryside, he doesn’t have a chance; he isn’t a mouser and never learned to hunt.

He needs a home, a good home, one that is understanding and loving.  That’s all I want for him; it breaks my heart that it can’t be with me. He’s a good cat.  He’s had a harsher life than any animal deserves, and now not only is he about to be taken from the last vestige of the home he’s had for his entire life, he may end up out in the cold. 

Any patient, understanding, and loving home would be enriched by him.  He deserves a shot at a good life, so if you can help him find a home, please get in touch. 

If you know anyone in the Sherman-Denison area of Texas who can help, either by giving him a home or helping him to find one, please please, let either me, Dave, or Marsha know. Marsha can be contacted on 903-647-5652 (between 4pm and 6pm Central time is best). Any and all help will be gratefully received!

Thanks for your time, everyone. I have my fingers crossed that we can find the little fella a new home.

Impeccable Timing

My body apparently has the worst timing ever.  Although I suppose that it did hold off until after my birthday, which is something.

The weekend was lovely. The Brisbane Writer’s Festival was on, and I went along on both days to meet up with friends and listen to the talks. On the whole, they were interesting, but less focussed on the writing than last year. For example, what I was hoping would be an interesting talk about writing erotica turned out to be three women talking about sex – hilarious, but not exactly what I had gone along for. One of the best parts of it was the fact that two of the panel clearly didn’t like each other.

We managed to get to the talk about copyright, which was handy. Lots of good information to be had there, though they didn’t really touch on e-publishing rights much. I’m relieved to know that copyright is automatic in Australia – none of this need to register that I’m told is present in the US. If you make it, it’s yours.

The other really interesting talk was by Jeff Lindsay (author of the Dexter books), a psychiatrist, a criminologist, and a philosopher. Psychopaths are fascinating people – broken and a little bit scary. Two parts of the talk saddened me. First, ‘pscyhopath’ and ‘sociopath’ are used interchangeably in the industry, lumping those who have a mental/emotional issue in with those who go out and actively hurt people. This bothers me. Second, they gave out some statistics for just how many people are believed to be sociopathic (I’m going to use the terms to mean different things, dammit). Scary. I could go on about this, but I might save that for another post sometime.

Lots of food for thought there – and lots of material to be wound into writing later.

On Sunday night, a group of friends came out to dinner with me, and insisted on singing ‘happy birthday’ in the middle of the street. Embarrassing, but touching. Bless ’em. It was a good night.

On Tuesday, we had a big deadline at work. All of the ticket work had to be finished off so that we could start publishing our documents for our release at the end of the month. Needless to say, there was a lot of running around and tying up loose ends.

This morning, I took up the reins of Team Leader to run the publishing process (which takes about two weeks). The current TL is training me as we go.

So yesterday was the perfect time for me to have a cold come on. My head is stuffy and heavy, and my chest hurts even more than usual. I can feel it trying to settle in my chest and keep wondering if this is going to descend into pneumonia like it did in March. Awesome.

I can’t afford to take time off right now – we’re crazybusy at work, I don’t have the sick or leave time to take, I have to learn all of this, and it’s not stuff I can do from home. So I’m loading up with cold meds and hoping that this doesn’t develop into anything nastier. On the plus side, I don’t feel much worse today than I did yesterday.

I have warned the folks that I probably won’t be able to do my birthday dinner on Thursday, and the dinner I had lined up with friends for Friday isn’t looking great either. I’m supposed to be supporting my Triading buddies at Gen Con on Saturday, and right now I’m just glad that I didn’t make any promises to play. Argh.

So, yeah. This week’s going to suck. I’m pretty much working and then going home and collapsing. FE (my new project with some friends) is going to have to wait, and AB is probably not going to be as good as I’d like it to be. I will try to keep up with the beloved blogfic, though. Wish me luck!