D1sc0r0b0t

End of the road

2015-04-29T22:00:00.001+12:00

Okay, that may be a little melodramatic. It's not the end of the road, but it is the end of d1sc0r0b0t.

Well, not the end. But it's time for this blog to go into its cocoon and turn into a beautiful butterfly.

You can find my new place at grant-stone.com

See you there.

The Dritty Doesen is here!

2014-11-14T07:30:00.000+13:00

My friend and fellow Cerberusite (why does that sound like something spiky from a Clive Barker book?) Matthew Sanborn Smith has just released his first collection. And it's ... well, it's one hundred percent, free-range, hand-reared pure Matt. Any Matthew Sanborn Smith story contains at least 105% of your recommended daily allowance of Weird Stuff, so if you read one every day then by the end of a month you'll be glowing green and dancing on the ceiling like a cross between Bruce Banner and Lionel Richie. Which I think we can all agree is the best way to be.

You can pick up a copy of The Dritty Doesen at Amazon right here. And you should. Now. Well, soon. First though, check out Steve Sepp, Tasty! Tasty! right here at d1sc0r0b0t. Then get on over to Amazon. Operators are standing by. Do they have operators? Seems like they'd have operators.

And now, there's this!

Thanks, Grant, for allowing me to share this here! The Dritty Doesen is my first collection. In keeping with my general unreasonableness, I decided to come right out of the gate with my least reasonable stories. Here's one that first appeared in Nature (The journal, not that big thing outside). The collection contains eleven more stories, and behind the scenes looks at how each of them came into being. On top of that, you get a gorgeous cover by the awesome Galen Dara! Hope you dig it!

Steve Sepp, Tasty! Tasty!

by Matthew Sanborn Smith

We didn't eat Steve on a Tuesday, which I think was one of the things that made him special.

Steve Sepp, he was one of those all-time losers you talk about to make your own life seem bearable. Lived in a mobile home that hadn't run in a year and a half (that was what he called his car, anyway), couldn't get work, divorced, running from everybody. You didn't want to hang with the guy, because you didn't want to catch whatever he had, you know what I mean? But I felt bad for him and other people did too. The wife would bring him by a loaf of bread she baked or some corn muffins or whatever, usually when we were on our way to the hospital on Tuesday nights.

This one night though, Steve's sick as a dog, doubled over in pain. He took it until he couldn't take it anymore, which wasn't long really, cause Steve was a major wuss on top of all his other problems. Mira and I, we hustle him over to the ER. Nurse asks a couple questions, presses her hand against his belly button. “Might be your appendix,” she says and they grab a wheelchair and hustle him off.

Of course, of all the people we know, Steve was the guy that gets appendicitis. That's his luck. “Well, at least he doesn't have to wait,” I says to Mira. She slaps my arm and we head to the South end of the building where we wanted to go in the first place.

The Baker Street Hospital is the place to go on Tuesday nights if you aren't already sick. Tuesday's usually their biggest outpatient day and The Outpatient Diner is what draws people from all over the neighborhood and beyond. All those little bits and pieces they cut off of people during the day, they wind up on the menu. You know, stew, pulled meat sandwiches, what have you. If you're an outpatient, you get a freebie after your surgery. Most of 'em want a bite of themselves. You could call it cannibalism I suppose, but everyone who was on that menu was up and walking around (or wheeling around). The Hospital has the waivers. It's all on the up and up.

Not having any insurance, Steve signed the waivers without a blink because it defrayed some of his costs. Not a lot, but every little bit helps. He was in the hole as it was. If he lived through this, it would kill him.

So, like I say, Tuesday nights are hopping at the Diner. It got so that regulars like me and Mira couldn't even get in. We're getting bumped by celebrities, for chrissakes, like the guy who does Sharona LaHaye's hair and that pip who sells Maxi all her pet supplies.

So we give up and go back on Wednesday, hoping maybe to get a discount on day-old spleen soup or something, I don't know what we were thinking, but we were glad we did. ‘Scuse me, my mouth is watering just remembering it.

We walk in not knowing what's what and the place is nuts. Jimmy Palbro runs up to us before we even sit down, and says, he says, “Al, Mira, you guys gotta try this!” He's got a couple of biscuits with some gravy on 'em like it's the south or somethin' only it's brown gravy. Anyway we taste 'em and me and Mira, our eyes bug out.

“What is this?” I ask him. And he says:

“It's Steve Sepp gravy! Steve from down the street? They musta brought him in for somethin'”

“Yeah,” I says, “Mira and me, we brought him in last night.”

“You hear that, everybody?” Jimmy Palbro yells, “Al and Mira are the ones who brought Steve in!” And they're hollerin' and applaudin' like we're the ones who made him sick.

You generally, you go down to the diner, you meet your buddies, the regulars, and you talk about the Sox or politics or whatnot, but this Wednesday, and I remember it like it was yesterday, this Wednesday all we can talk about is Steve. Holy Jesus, you should have tasted him on the mashed potatoes! When they wheeled him in for his share, the chef actually announced him and I tell you, we stood up and clapped and whistled louder than before. He coulda run for friggin' mayor that day. We would've carried him to his office on our shoulders. And he knew it too.

He's sittin' there in his wheelchair, lookin' skin-boney, like he always has, miserable as hell, and when he really gets it, that we're clapping for him, he sits up straighter. He even smiles. Well, with what teeth he has.

Somebody hands him a little plate of potatoes covered in himself. That was like a feast to Steve, even on a good day. The whole place gets quiet, and we're just standing there, watching him. The nurse gives him a spoon and he gets a little scoop, he's shakin' a little, and he puts it in his mouth and you can see his eyes get really wide. And he works his mouth a couple of times, but you don't really gotta chew it, you know that hospital stuff is basically mush, but he works it and he swallows and he goes to everybody:

“I'm really good!”

And the whole house goes apeshit!

Use Only As Directed - may contain traces of 'Always Falling Up'

2014-07-06T20:19:00.000+12:00

Use Only As Directed, the latest anthology edited by Simon Petrie and Edwina Harvey is out now, featuring stories from some of the best genre authors from Australia and New Zealand. I'm in there too.

'Always Falling Up' is a heartwarming tale of consciousness transfer where nothing ever goes wrong and everyone is happy. That last sentence may be a lie.

Stephen Dedman, Dirk Flinthart, Dave Freer, Michelle Goldsmith, Alex Isle, Lyn McConchie, Claire McKenna, Charlotte Nash, Ian Nichols, Leife Shallcross, Douglas A Van Belle, Janeen Webb, M Darusha Wehm. 216 pages of crunchy goodness, all wrapped up in a cover by Lewis P. Morley.

Pick up a copy today direct from Peggy Bright Books or Amazon

Baby Teeth

2013-11-28T21:11:00.002+13:00

I've been terribly remiss in not mentioning this yet, but Baby Teeth, the first publication by Paper Road Press is now available:

Baby Teeth: Bite-sized Tales of Terror

Edited by Dan Rabarts & Lee Murray
Kids can say the creepiest things.
27 New Zealand and American authors delve into the strange, the unexpected, and the downright terrifying things that kids say in this collection of all new flash fiction. From the mouths of babes come 37 stories, from the haunting to the hilarious to the horrific.
Leave the lights on tonight. So you’ll see them coming.

Dan and Lee have put together some great (and scary) flash fiction.

Oh, you want it in ebook form? It's on Amazon here. But don't think you're safe just because it's digital...

Better Phones - now available on phones

2013-06-14T21:55:00.003+12:00

StarShipSofa has been invaded by kiwis this week. Tune in to hear Dan Rabarts' Paint by Numbers and my tale of running aliens, Better Phones. This means you can now listen to Better Phones on your phone when you go out running, which seems entirely appropriate.

Thanks to Tony, Adam and the rest of the sofa crew for letting a couple of kiwis fly on the Sofa. What? Course they can fly. Don't know where you heard otherwise.

StarShipSofa No.293 Dan Rabarts and Grant Stone

Regenerating

2013-06-07T20:35:00.002+12:00

The most excellent people at Random Static have done it again. Regeneration: New Zealand Speculative Fiction II is now available for preorder. Twenty two tales of science fiction and fantasy you're not going to find anywhere else.

Featuring stories by Matt Cowens, Tim Jones, Mary Brock Jones, O.J. Cade, Grace Bridges, I.K. Paterson-Harkness, Kylie Thorne, Debbie Cowens, J.C. Hart, Jennifer Compton, Simon Petrie, Anna Smith, Rebecca Harris, Elizabeth Gatens, Jonathan James Todd, A.J. Fitzwater, Fran Atkinson, Anna Caro, Dan Rabarts, Lee Murray, Grant Stone, and Toni Wi. And how great is that cover by SJV-award winner Emma Weakley.

Come and say hi at the launch party: Friday 12th July, Comfort & Quality Hotel, Cuba Street Wellington, 6pm.

Did I mention you can preorder now?

Free reads!

2013-05-06T21:40:00.000+12:00

A very late post here, but in case you didn't hear...

Two stories first published in Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine have made this year's Sir Julius Vogel ballot in the short story category: 'Paint by Numbers' by Dan Rabarts and my own 'Better Phones'. ASIM have been kind enough to make both stories available as a limited edition ebook. Grab your copy here.

But that's not all! You can find links to read every work in the short story category (and extracts from some other categories) on the SFFANZ site here.

Words on the Wind

2013-02-21T21:16:00.000+13:00

If you're in Auckland on March 7th, why not drop in to Mangere Bridge Library and let someone read you a story?

For anyone in Auckland on March 7th, you are invited to a NZ Book Month event, put on by the Auckland branch of SpecFic NZ. It features a panel of published specfic writers, where each will give a short reading from their work followed by a Q&A session.

The panel so far is:

Grant Stone - SF short story writer extraordinaire and twice winner of the Sir Julius Vogel short story category

Grace Bridges - President of SpecFic NZ, SF novelist, and independent publisher of Splashdown Books and Waitemata Books ( NZ fiction)

Darian Smith - award winning short story writer of both fantasy and literary fiction

Elaine Smith - multi-media artist and author, she writes contemporary and SF short stories, as well as art works featuring a variety of media.

Lila Richards - dark fantasy novelist and medieval specialist (http://tinyurl.com/arzs8sk)

Come along for a great evening if you are interested in speculative fiction (Sf, fantasy, horror, and anything vaguely related), want to meet others with a like interest and listen to Auckland SpecFic authors.

Place: Mangere Bridge Library, 5 Church Rd, Mangere Bridge. There is car parking right beside it, and a park for the kids to run around in just outside if you can't get baby sitters.

Time : 6.30 - 8pm

Date: Thursday, 7th March.

To get there, take the first off ramp just past Mangere bridge when heading to the airport on the Southwestern motorway. If coming from the airport direction, take the Coronation Rd off ramp. The library is just behind the shops on the western side.

Awards

2013-02-09T23:03:00.002+13:00

I haven't published a lot of short stories this year - I've been working on... other things. Good things. Perhaps, if various things happen you'll get to see these good things one day. In the meantime, I'll keep working on these other, secret, good things.

It's Sir Julius Vogel Award time again. I have a couple of works eligible in the short story category:

Wyoming, published last May in Comets and Criminals

Better Phones, published in Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine #56

I believe SpecFicNZ are planning on publishing a comprehensive list of qualifying works by SpecFicNZ members. I'll put a link up when it's ready.

And on the subject of awards, I am eligible for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer this year. Of course, so are a whole bunch of very talented people. Don't believe me? The folks at Stupefying Stories have done this:

Now, for the first time in the award's 40-year history, the2013 Campbellian Pre-Reading Anthology provides a much-needed and long-overdue guide to the newly emerging talents eligible for this year's award. Containing 80 complete short stories by 43 different authors, as well as additional information about another 58 potential candidates, the 2013 Campbellian Pre-Reading Anthology is your guide to the newest science fiction and fantasy writers who are helping to define the future of the genre.

The anthology is only available for a short time, so grab it here while you can. There's a lot of great fiction to go through, but I can guarantee that my story has the longest title.

NZ Speculative Fiction Blogging Week

2012-09-18T21:50:00.000+12:00

It's NZ Speculative Fiction Blogging Week once more.

Grace Bridges, author, publisher and new president of SpecFicNZ posted an interview with me here earlier today. And because symmetry is fun, here's me interviewing Grace, well, here.

Why did you start Splashdown Books?

I came to the publishing scene just as indie publishing was becoming a viable option. Boosted by the example of the likes of Jeremy Robinson and Frank Creed, I decided to learn how to do it myself. So I did that for my first book, which was Faith Awakened, but only after getting a ton of critiques and assistance from the wider writing community in order to ensure I was putting out a good product. Then, once I knew how to make a book, it was only a short step to the decision to do it for other writers.

What is the Splashdown philosophy?

Quality books, quality people, and plenty of weird ideas. I seek new manuscripts that need minimal editing to be ready for the world, and I seek new authors who are good team players. Stories have to be the best they can be. Authors help each other out with tasks across the board, from editing to design to marketing. We’re a family.

How did you get started writing fiction?

When I was nine, my Nana gave me a hardbound notebook. It looked like a real book, so I thought I had better write one in it. I started by carefully numbering all the pages in the bottom corners. Then my Dad started me off with a generic story prompt “Zebra” which I managed to spin into a long-running illustrated science fiction tale alternating between infantile cops-n-robbers in space and ripping off recently-viewed movies.

Do you deliberately incorporate themes and purpose into your work?

Not deliberately. I feel these things need to be organic. Story must come first. You can have a great story and a fun read without a theme, but a themed story can be pretty lame sometimes. If a theme suggests itself then I am happy to exploit it and increase its power, but I won’t add an artificial one just for the sake of it.

How would you describe your writing?

Literary-influenced, deeply personal, descriptive, and characterised by evocative vignettes.

Find Grace:
http://grace.splashdownbooks.com
http://www.facebook.com/gracebridges1
http://pinterest.com/splashdown

And they cut me to ribbons and taught me to drive.

2012-08-29T22:43:00.000+12:00

Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine #56 is now available and includes my story Better Phones.
ASIM #56 is a big one, marking ten years of publication. If you've never read ASIM before, this is the issue to check out. I know what you're thinking - ASIM is an Australian magazine, which means super expensive postage for you lot in the northern hemisphere. But fear not! You can snag an epub subscription for cheap here. Or if you just want the single issue, get on over to Wizard's Tower Books.

I've been running for a few years now. The paths that Kerry and the other runners take is just round the road from my house. Come and visit and we can run it together. I don't run fast, but if the sun's out, it's a great way to spend some time. Be warned, my running playlist has been known to be include folk music and Fleetwood Mac. But for the last six months it's just been Gaslight Anthem. I can't not move when I hear these guys.

A nice cup of tea.

2012-08-05T21:36:00.000+12:00

I was totally thrilled to learn that my Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences story 'A Ruby in Rain' has been named as one of the finalists for the 2012 Parsec Awards in the Best Speculative Fiction Story: Small Cast category. The Ministry did very well - every story in that category is one of theirs.

This was a fun story to write: it was my first Steampunk story and was a great excuse to learn where all the good opium dens were in Auckland. I'd like to thank Pip and Tee once again for letting me play in their world.

To celebrate, I think a nice cup of tea is in order. Just the Choysa though - none of that Amnesic Darjeeling stuff.

There's a room where the light won't find you

2012-07-26T21:42:00.001+12:00

My story 'Young Love on the Run from the Federal Alien Administration New Mexico Division (1984)' is featured on the latest StarShipSofa. It's the story of a boy, a girl, and the government agency that wants to tear them apart. It's narrated magnificently by Christie Yant and Matthew Sanborn Smith. You can listen on your iPhone if you want, but for best results, I recommend copying it to a tape and playing it while driving somewhere with lots of sunshine. Hope you like it.

An IDE for writers

2012-07-24T22:32:00.001+12:00

I've been using the same tools for writing for years. Notepad++ for initial drafts, Word for later ones and Sonar for submission tracking. I carry a journal for jotting down random thoughts, although these days I tend to use the memo app on my phone instead. And that's it: a simple set that's served me well.

Microsoft Word is great. Every now and then I try Open Office or Google Docs again, but I always find myself coming back to Word. It's solid, comfortable and just works. It's an excellent word processor. But writing isn't word processing.

Recently I've found myself frustrated by Word. It might be because my stories are getting longer all the time. Or it could be that I'm finding that more often stories are coming to me as snatches and fragments, little scenes in random order. Word can handle crazy large files and jump around to different sections fast as anything. But I can't.

I'm doing most of my writing on my netbook during my commute. It's a 35 minute trip each way. If I'm organised I can rip through a thousand words in that time. If I'm not, well, it's far less.

I wanted a way to generate a map so I could quickly move around large files (or collections of files) in a semi random order.

I've been hearing about Scrivener for ages, but I've never really been tempted. Until a friend of mine described it as:

An IDE for writers

IDE: integrated development environment. Basically, where I live 9-to-5. Here's Visual Studio 2010:

And here's Scrivener:

He's right.

I'm taking Scrivener for a drive to see if it's something I can add to my toolkit. I've started with a story that's 75% complete. I'm getting used to thinking in terms of scenes instead of a whole story and switching between a unified document view and index cards. So far, I'm impressed. The performance is great on my netbook and I get plenty of typing room on my small screen, even with the binder and notes displayed.

I'll let you know how I get on.

Kick it.

2012-07-23T23:07:00.001+12:00

I've mentioned Ripley Patton on this blog a bunch of times. She's a friend and a fellow writer - we've turned up in the same table of contents on more than one occasion. We even tied for the Best Short Story Sir Julius Vogel Award back in 2010. Ripley tells beautiful, heartful stories that'll bite you if you're not careful.

For a few years now, Ripley's been working on a novel. Through earthquakes and moving from one side of the world to the other, she's been writing. And now it's done.

The novel's all done, polished and ready to go. But it's not a book. Yet. That's where you come in. Ripley's set up a Kickstarter to raise money to do all those things that turn done into DONE. What, you thought you just type 'the end' and that's all? You must be new around here. Professional editing. Typesetting. Printing. Typing 'the end' is just the start.

I think you're going to want to read this book. Ripley's already told some fantastic stories. This is the best one yet. What's it about? Oh, just this.

There are secrets we keep hidden deep inside of us. Secrets of abuse and abandonment and self-harm. No one can see them. No one can find them. No one can touch us there.

Until now.

Olivia Black just discovered that her ghost hand, a genetic defect, can do more than light up a room. It can reach into people and pull things out. Things from the darkest depths of the human psyche never meant to exist in this world.

Olivia can pick-pocket the soul.

But she can't control her ability, or the strange items it extracts, and the only thing between Olivia and the men bent on taking the power of her hand is a boy she barely knows and doesn't trust.

Go. Make a pledge.

Curious Perversions

2012-07-09T23:45:00.000+12:00

When I was just starting my career, in between uni classes, I worked in the IT department of a major New Zealand bank a couple of days a week. It's long gone now, lost in a churn of takeovers, mergers and the endless appetite of the money markets. We had some shiny toys back then: Borland Delphi hadn't been released yet, but I called someone in the local office and somehow convinced them to send me a copy. I spent a lot of time installing OS/2, feeding disk after disk into a row of IBM PS/2 Model 80s. I learned a lot about life in an office, from the cubicles of the IT department, where mother boards and ribbon cable splayed across the desks like an autopsy, to the cubicles of the COBOL programmers, always silent except for the clacking of heavy keys and stacks of perfectly-balanced piles of dot matrix printouts that reached to the perforated ceiling tiles like the pillars of a cathedral, to the clean open area of the Operations department, working through the night in the service of their mainframe gods.

I learned something else too - to avoid walking past that glassed-in office, the one with the pictures of women taped up on every wall. Not Swimsuit posters. Not even page 3 girls. I can't remember the name of the guy who lurked in that office. Can't even remember what he did - something with databases. But I remember the look on his face when he saw you coming up the hallway. I remember the way he'd beckon you in and close the door. Then he'd open his draw and show you where he kept his private stash - hundreds of CD-ROMS, every one packed with 700MB of hardcore pornography.

This was the same place where, when one of my colleagues resigned, her leaving gift was a gay porn magazine and a carrot. This was presented to her in front of the whole team. Everyone thought it was hilarious. Ha ha.

But that was eighteen years ago. Everything's different now: OS/2 is dead and buried. My phone has more processing power than every PS/2 in the department. Delphi still lurks like a revenant, though everyone has long since moved to Java or .NET or Ruby/Python/Scala/JavaScript. We threw out the waterfall and replaced it with Agile, covered the walls with burndown charts, then pulled those down and replaced them with Kanban boards. Every day brings some shiny new API to play with. Everything's different now.

Mostly.

For an industry that's so keen on reenginering ourselves and our processes, some of us still don't get that other humans are actually people. The IT industry in 2012 is a place where Brogrammers are a thing.

The wider gaming community is a place where woman can face a firestorm of harrassment for having the temerity to try and raise moneyto research "tropes vs women in videogames."

The Daily WTF is a site that's been in my RSS reader for years. The site ("Curious Perversions in Information Technology") posts examples of terrible code. Sometimes antipatterns can be a great learning tool. Sometimes the comments on the article are informative and funny.

Sometimes they're not.

It's funny how you can visit a site for years and not notice what's really going on. When I saw the protagonist of this story was female, I wondered how many comments it would take. First few posts weren't too bad, just a couple of "you crazy lady". It didn't get to the oral sex until comment #13. After that the whole thing descended into the usual boring misogyny. After that it's the same all the way down, except for a few people commenting about the actual article.

So I got mad. I made a post: "The casual mysogyny of some of the commenters here is pathetic. The irony that, on a site that exists to make fun of people's broken code, your broken personality is the real WTF."

Harsh? Perhaps. I was mad.

The comments continued, much as before. And to a certain extend, they didn't seem that bad to me. Certainly not when compared to the stuff that Anita Sarkeesian has faced. So I figured maybe I'd just email the owner of the site, see if he couldn't do something. Maybe he didn't know what was going on. Maybe he'd post something into the thread along the lines of "keep it down, you kids".

Here's what I sent:

Alex,

I've been watching the comments on this article http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/Tale-of-the-Cryptic-Encoding.aspx and frankly, I'm disgusted. Are you OK with this sort of stuff being posted on your site? According to your advertising page, you reach half a million IT professionals every month. What is remotely professional about this?

You don't have any facility to filter comments by offensive posters, or to flag abuse. You don't even have a forum code of conduct. But your name (and your copyright) is at the bottom of every one of these pages.

I know this isn't the largest site on the web and there are plenty of examples far worse elsewhere. But isn't that kind of the point? Sexism and racism are rife in the IT industry and in giving these bullies free reign on your site, you're endorsing it. Are you OK with this?

And here's what I received back:

Grant,

I'm guessing by your accusatory tone and your faux disgust that you're the type who screams "racist" when someone mentions monkeys, who avoids uttering "bagels" in front of Jews, and who accuses anyone using a gender-specific pronoun of being misogynist.

As TDWTF is a hobby of mine, I hardly have enough time keeping up with content, let alone reading comments, let alone patrolling them with a fine-toothed comb to ensure that people who think people will get offended by certain words won't get offended because those words are there... not to mention adding features to allow people to flag comments as such. And as it so happens, I did not read the comments on this article... and don't plan to, as I'm sure the only "sexist" thing is someone mentioning some stereotypical behavior by either men or women (but most likely women, since this is faux disgust, after all). But I could be wrong...

You're right though, there is a lot of sexism and racism in the industry: certain people think that women and non-whites need to be treated like children and mollycoddled to make sure their precious little feelings don't get hurt. Turns out these folks aren't any lesser than white men, and actually, they prefer to be treated equally.

The Pragmatic Programmers talk about software entropy using the metaphor of "Broken Windows":

In inner cities, some buildings are beautiful and clean, while others are rotting hulks. Why? Researchers in the field of crime and urban decay discovered a fascinating trigger mechanism, one that very quickly turns a clean, intact, inhabited building into a smashed and abandoned derelict .

A broken window.

One broken window, left unrepaired for any substantial length of time, instills in the inhabitants of the building a sense of abandonment—a sense that the powers that be don’t care about the building. So another window gets broken. People start littering. Graffiti appears. Serious structural damage begins. In a relatively short space of time, the building becomes damaged beyond the owner’s desire to fix it, and the sense of abandonment becomes reality.

Perhaps the behavior of the posters and editor of the Daily WTF aren't as bad as the examples I posted at the top of this article. But if we saw that behavior in a program, we'd tear it out and write it again properly. We'd write a bunch of unit tests to ensure the bug didn't come back. We might even post part of it to The Daily WTF.

If someone wrote some code, then, when it was discovered to be full of bugs, disclaimed all responsibility for fixing it, we'd say they were a bad programmer. We might even post some of it to The Daily WTF.

We don't live with broken windows in our code. Why do we accept them in our industry?

How is a blog disowned by its editor different to code disowned by its programmer?

Comments are closed on this post because they're going to be so predictable I could just write them myself. But don't worry - if you've really got something to say about any of this, I know a place where you can comment all day if you like. Maybe use small words though, huh?

Long post, huh? Guess it must be my time of the month.

Wyoming

2012-05-17T22:19:00.000+12:00

My story Wyoming is now online at the excellent Comets and Criminals. It's a story of a boy, his dad and some dinosaurs.

Besides Wyoming, you can find Heads You Win by Lydia S. Gray and White Man's Burden Redux by Day Al-Mohamed. New stories will be popping up at C&C every week this month.

Further Marginalia

2012-03-11T22:47:00.000+13:00

Writing's a pretty boring thing, if you're looking from the outside. A guy gets on the 7am ferry and has his netbook out soon as he sits down. Types furiously, until he has to slam the lid shut and make a move or he won't be getting off at all. The most boring thing in the world.

But inside that guy's head? There's galaxies and ages and when he looks up he can't believe that's his 35 minutes is up.

Which is a very long-winded way of saying that writing on my commute is still working for me. Most days it's the only writing time I get, but it seems to be enough. Yet another way that writing is similar to running - sprinting's for suckers. Only way you ever get anywhere is doing a little, growing a little, every day. Here endeth the lesson.

It's voting season for the Sir Julius Vogel Awards again. Although only New Zealand residents can be nominated, anyone in the world can vote. There's a list of eligible works by SpecFicNZ members here. Helen Lowe lists a some eligible works here. My story Young Love on the Run from the Federal Alien Administration New Mexico Division (1984) is eligible in the short story category.

One story I'd like to bring to your attention is Steam Girl by Dylan Horrocks. It's an absolutely masterful story, something small and intimate that's also a planet-spanning adventure. It was published in Steampunk!, edited by Kelly Link & Gavin J. Grant. Seek it out. You won't regret it.

Writing in the margins

2012-01-01T21:47:00.000+13:00

It's funny. I sit here in 2012 and think that 2011 was all bad, but it had a few sweet moments. My first pro sale. Writing Steampunk for the The Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences. Having a poem published by the Science Fiction Poetry Association. A tiny little story down the back of The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities.

But for all that, 2011 felt pretty flat for me. A big part of that was being stuck in a day job that went from being fresh and interesting to flat out soul-destroying. I spent far too many months last year being miserable about the nine-to-five, which resulted in me not sleeping particularly well and, most of the time, in no state for writing.

So I did something about it.

A few months ago I started a new job, at a much larger company. Nothing on the technical side is particularly challenging, but I'm working with (and for) some very smart people. I like going to work in the morning and when I come home at night I don't worry about it.

Quite deliberately, the new job is in Auckland city. Which means if I don't want to sit in traffic for hours every day, I have to take the ferry. 35 minutes each way. That's an extra hour of writing, five days a week. Since I started the new job, armed with a fancy new netbook, I've been writing up a storm. Finished a couple of short stories that had languished for too long. Working on finishing another couple now. Added more words to the very ambitious was-a-short-story-is-now-a-novella-might-end-up-a-novel collaboration. And I wrote a couple of children's books, which could be the hardest thing I've ever attempted.

But all of that? That's all just a warm up for 2012. This year, I'm writing a novel. How hard can it be? Well, probably very hard. But it's time.

I don't know if I'll be blogging much as I put the thing together, but I might put up the odd update. I've always been a seat-of-the-pants writer, but for this one I'll be trying to plan as much as I possibly can in advance. I'll be collecting metrics so I can measure how long it all takes. And stealing some ideas from the dayjob, I'm thinking of using a burn down chart to plot my progress. So the blogging's going to be light. But by the end of this year (and hopefully a lot earlier), I'll have a finished novel.

That's not a New Year resolution.
That's a promise.

Ruby, Tales and Wood.

2011-05-18T21:49:00.000+12:00

Several things:

My story A Ruby in Rain is now online at Tales from the Archives, the official Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences anthology.

From the farthest edge of the Empire, New Zealand agents Lachlan King and Barry Ferguson are called to interview a recent arrival to Auckland’s prisons. An infamous gambler has turned himself into their custody, not for the safety of society but for his own. The Ministry steps in to uncover a man’s story of impressive luck, and more incredible vision.

Opium dens, clockwork eyes and exploding sheep: just another night in Auckland. Check it out.

Phoenix Rising, the first Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences novel by Pip Ballantine and Tee Morris is available right now. Huge thanks to Pip and Tee for letting me play in their universe.

Tales for Canterbury is now at the printers! You already know it's an amazing bunch of stories by even more amazing people. If you haven't already ordered your copy, just go do it now, OK? I'll wait.

And finally - I can't believe I haven't blogged about it earlier (blame Twitter) but my story 'Wood' will be included in Ticonderoga Publications' Year's Best Australian Fantasy & Horror. The full list of stories:

RJ Astruc: “Johnny and Babushka”
Peter M Ball: “L’esprit de L’escalier”
Alan Baxter: “The King’s Accord”
Jenny Blackford: “Mirror”
Gitte Christensen: “A Sweet Story”
Matthew Chrulew: “Schubert By Candlelight”
Bill Congreve: “Ghia Likes Food”
Rjurik Davidson: “Lovers In Caeli-Amur”
Felicity Dowker: “After the Jump”
Dale Elvy: “Night Shift”
Jason Fischer: “The School Bus”
Dirk Flinthart: “Walker”
Bob Franklin: “Children’s Story”
Christopher Green: “Where We Go To Be Made Lighter”
Paul Haines: “High Tide At Hot Water Beach”
Lisa L. Hannett: “Soil From My Fingers”
Stephen Irwin: “Hive”
Gary Kemble: “Feast Or Famine”
Pete Kempshall: “Brave Face”
Tessa Kum: “Acception”
Martin Livings: “Home”
Maxine McArthur: “A Pearling Tale”
Kirstyn McDermott: “She Said”
Andrew McKiernan: “The Memory Of Water”
Ben Peek: “White Crocodile Jazz”
Simon Petrie: “Dark Rendezvous”
Lezli Robyn: “Anne-droid of Green Gables”
Angela Rega: “Slow Cookin’ “
Angela Slatter: “The Bone Mother”
Angela Slatter & Lisa L Hannett: “The February Dragon”
Grant Stone: “Wood”
Kaaron Warren: “That Girl”
Janeen Webb: “Manifest Destiny”

And that's it for news. Now I'd better retreat into my cave and write some more stories. Thank you and goodnight!

Young Love on the Run from the Federal Alien Administration New Mexico Division (1984)

2011-05-11T22:23:00.000+12:00

My family lived in Christchurch. Every summer we'd make the trip up to Marahau, a camp at the entrance of the Abel Tasman National Park.

Far more eloquent people than I have written about the eyes of youth. All I know is the summers lasted forever, the sky was bigger than God and the air was so rich with energy I'm still running on it now. To walk barefoot on a burning road, then to sink your toes into the sand at the edge of the bluest sea - I can't see how Heaven can be any better than being thirteen years old in 1985.

I wanted to write a story that celebrated everything I loved about the Eighties. Not the reality: the dirt and the politics and the poverty of it. But about all that music, all those movies, all that television I soaked up. And that unending sun. Live Aid and 12" Singles and Rocky 4 and Apple IIs and riding away on a luck dragon after saving the princess.

So, this week at Strange Horizons: Young Love on the Run from the Federal Alien Administration New Mexico Division (1984). Think of it as E.T., as directed by John Hughes. Hope you like it.

Huge thanks to Karen Meisner, whose amazing editing skills hit me like an after school special. Karen helped to solve problems that had stumped me worse than a Rubik's Cube. And I couldn't even peel the stickers off.

And I don't suppose they'll ever read this, but I also need to thank Curt Smith and Roland Orzabal. This story would not exist without them.

Postscript: The same week my story appears at Strange Horizons, they run a review of My Little Pony. Not only is this entirely appropriate for an Eighties story, but I don't think there's anything I can ever do to impress my daughters more than appearing on a website with Pinkie Pie.

Driving by

2011-03-13T22:20:00.000+13:00

This is one of those posts where I cram a whole bunch in. Ready?

My story 'The Salt Line' is featured in Night-Mantled: The Best of Wily Writers (Volume 1). I'm in good company: Nathan Crowder, Jennifer Brozek, Seanan Mcguire and many others including the mighty Ripley Patton. It's available at Amazon and Smashwords. Check it out.

Ripley of course, lives down in Christchurch, my home town. I've tried several times to write something meaningful about the earthquake and failed. Emily Perkins covers it better than I ever could in The Guardian.

My story 'When Her Wings' is included in Tales For Canterbury, organised by the amazing J.C. Hart and Anna Caro, with all proceeds going to help Christchurch. It's going to be available soon, in both ebook and paper versions. Seriously people, you're going to want to buy a copy of this one. Check out the list of contributors! I'm going to ask everyone to make a real big noise when it comes out.

If you're in Auckland on March 25th, get yourself to a library for the Auckland Writers and Poets benefit for the Christchurch earthquake. Which library? Pretty much any of the 30+ libraries around Auckland. Looks like most are kicking off at either 6PM, with a few at 1PM. Check your local library for more details. I'll be reading something at the Highland Park library.

Just one more piece of news. I've just learned that my poem 'Dead Air' from Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine #46 received an honorable mention in Ellen Datlow's Best Horror of the Year! And it wasn't just me: John Dixon & Adam Browne's 'The Laughing Girl of Bora Fanong' and Christopher Green's 'Linger' also got nods. If you haven't checked out Andromeda Spaceways before, consider that your invitation.

OK, one more. b0t #2 is late but it's coming. Soon. For serious.

The one about the year

2011-01-04T22:30:00.000+13:00

It's the time of year when people write posts summing up writerly activities.

2010 was odd year for me. The day job kicked my arse. Then, when I managed to get myself up off the canvas, kicked me again. Repeatedly. I just didn't seem to be able to manage my time particularly well.

Only two new stories saw print this year, both in Semaphore. March saw the publication of Starting Over, where our hero only wants to stop the assasination of John Lennon. Perhaps. Then in September, Wood, which I like to think of as Dawn of the Dead, with puppets.

Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine #46 contained my first published poem, Dead Air. If you'd told me a few years ago I'd see one of my poems in print, I wouldn't have believed you. I've never thought of myself as a poet. Still don't really. But apparently, somehow, I kind of am.

The Salt Line was reprinted over at the World SF Blog and in doing so becomes my most reprinted story.

So my writing wasn't on fire this year, but a whole bunch of other stuff was going on. I was proud to play a small part in the creation of SpecFicNZ. It launched at Au Contraire in August and now has 68 members. Hard to believe a few years ago I didn't know any other Kiwis writing spec fic. Meet ups are happening in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch and they're great. The Internet's great and all, but meeting people face-to-face is still so much better.

Also at Au Contraire I was honored to win another Sir Julius Vogel award for the story I still can't look full in the face, The Living Dead Boy. Even better, I tied with Ripley Patton, my friend and hero. I've never read anything from Ripley that hasn't been amazing. In fact, you need to check out Broken Water", just published today. It's really rather brilliant.

Then there was Worldcon. Liz and I took our first trip overseas for years, just so I could go to a scifi con? Yep. And was it ever worth it. To meet so many people I'd only ever communicated with online was great. To be able to represent StarShipSofa was beyond amazing. I think I'm kind of addicted to Worldcons now. Will I be at the next one? Yeah, no. Unless you'd like to pay?

Even though I complained about finding time to write I still managed to find time to keep up with the Electric Velocipede slush and StarShipSofa deck swabbing. And because I clearly didn't have enough to do, I went and set up my own fanzine. Issue #1 of b0t is available right now. Issue #2 is going to be even better and I'm working on making it available on the Kindle and other formats.

So that was 2010. What happens in 2011?
Good things.

I've written more in the past three days than I think I did over the past two months. And it seems to be good stuff. I've already got two stories slated to appear this year. Look for me at Strange Horizons. Yes, this is my first pro sale. Yes, I'm still smiling about it. And I've got an absolutely tiny story appearing in The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities, which amazingly, already has a page up on Amazon.com. Sure, my story is microfiction at the back, but I'll be between the covers with some of my heroes. Garth Nix. China Mieville. Michael. Freaking. Moorcock. I have no words for that.

2011 is going to rock. Say it with me kids. I'm going to find some time somewhere and do amazing things. So are you. The dog days are over.

Let's do it.

Introducing b0t.

2010-11-15T21:39:00.000+13:00

So I've just uploaded issue #1 of b0t, a new fanzine. For fans. It's designed to be read on your iPhone, iPod, Android phone, whatever. It might even work on a plain old PC.

Check it out.

I'm already thinking about content for issue #2. If you want to join the fun, check out the submissions page for more details,

Robot. Not disco.

2010-09-15T21:33:00.000+12:00

So I was going to write up an entry about the connections between science fiction and hip hop. Sure, metal and prog own fantasy, but if you really want to get your scifi on, it's hip hop you're gonna be calling. From Del tha Funkee Homosapien to Kool Keith to Gorillaz to Madvillain to the Beastie Boys, scifi and hip hop go together like peanut butter and jelly. And that's leaving out all of Nerdcore.

Problem with that subject is it's not very kiwi. And this being NZ speculative fiction blogging week, that just wouldn't do.

Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to present, coming straight outta Wellington, Tommy Ill. His debut album came out a couple of weeks ago. Grab it from iTunes, emusic, or even one of those record store things, if there's still one of those somewhere near you. He's touring NZ right now, so keep an eye out. Maybe buy him a pie or something.

Here's the video from his first single. And I don't care how much it messes up the layout of the blog. Because suddenly this whole post fits perfectly in NZ spec fic blogging week.

Therefore. A Robot.